


Tales From the Sanctioned Brothel: Part 2: The Lure

by ColdColdHeart



Series: The Key to Oslov [15]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bors Finally Makes a Friend As Socially Awkward As He Is, Brothels, Class Differences, Dystopia, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Forced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Nude Modeling, Objectification, Past Rape/Non-con, Police Brutality, Power Dynamics, Rape Aftermath, Revenge, Revolution, Spy Stuff, Suicidal Thoughts, Teen Angst, Teen Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 85,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27151259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdColdHeart/pseuds/ColdColdHeart
Summary: Fifteen years have passed since the events ofTales From the Sanctioned Brothel: Part 1: The Painted Boy.Hulda still isn’t dead. Einara still doesn’t have her vengeance. She, Kai, and Bors are biding their time, but it’s coming. It’s Ceill who will put the Brothel story and the True Hearth/Tilrey/Gersha story on a collision course.
Relationships: Bors Dartán/Kai Meirthal, Bors Dartán/Valgund Linnett, Einara Derán/Kai Meirthal
Series: The Key to Oslov [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1193242
Comments: 152
Kudos: 30





	1. The New Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> This story is turning out less dark/explicit than the previous one, and the tags reflect that. But it's Oslov, so expect abuses of power, including of a sexual kind. (I've been watching Harlots, and I've come to the conclusion that Oslov and 18th-century London have a lot in common in that respect!)
> 
> Nothing awful is going to happen to Ceill, though—at least not like what happened to Tilrey. In this story he's just going to be an occasionally wayward, fannishly inclined, privileged, and (of course!) angsty teen. Thanks so much for reading!! <3

_Year 370_

It was well after midnight when three strangers entered the lobby of the Sanctioned Brothel.

Einara Derán, who was working the front desk alone, stiffened when she saw two tall Constables, recognizable by their long, charcoal-gray parkas with orange piping. One of them was grim-faced while the other had a bit of a smirk, which was never good news in her mind.

Over her past fifteen years of preparing to succeed the Brothel director, she had learned to deal with government officials of all kinds, including officers of the law. But no matter how often Hulda told her not to fear people who had the power to toss her in detention, they still put her on edge.

These two Constables already appeared to have a prisoner. Between them, across the polished slate floor, trudged a youth wearing a parka and boots at least two sizes too big for him. One glance told Einara more than she wanted to know. His neck and left cheek were mottled with bruises, his black hair matted, his gaze trained down. Though he wasn’t restrained, the shuffling walk suggested he recently had been.

The smirking Constable eyed her. “You Hulda Dartán?”

He probably wanted her to rise from her seat as a gesture of respect. She didn’t. “Fir’n Director is indisposed, Fir Constable. I can receive you.”

The Constable grunted. He opened his satchel and pulled out a clipboard, which he tossed on the desk. “Brought you a present—new one for your stable. Everything’s been e-filed already, but these are for your paper records.”

The paperwork looked in order—but then, the right officials could make any unsavory situation look good. Einara returned her eyes to the boy. “Him?”

Most of the Brothel’s Oslov-born staffers were volunteers. The more questionable acquisitions were usually Outers, people like Einara herself, who had been trafficked into the establishment with citizenship as their “reward.”

This boy was no Outer, though. Despite the downcast eyes, he bore himself in a tense, prideful way that Einara associated with Reddan birth. “Is he of age?”

The smirking Constable laughed nastily. “Nineteen. Check his papers.”

A glance confirmed that the boy had graduated from a Reddan kellthavina, one of the secondary schools where the brighter children of Laborers and Upstarts mixed. His parents were both nurses, respectable R-5s. His name was Stefan Edvard Altmering.

“He doesn’t look happy with his new posting,” Einara said. She had perfected her studiously neutral tone long ago.

“Yeah, well.” The smirking Constable clapped the boy on the back. The boy stayed upright, but his mouth tightened at the contact. “He had a nice post in the Sector, but apparently he fucked up,” the Constable continued. “Or maybe Councillor Lindahl just really, really likes him.”

A chill went through Einara. The paperwork was signed by a sub-Admin in the Bureau of Resources, but most Admins paid allegiance to one Councillor or another. And she had some second-hand knowledge of Lindahl’s dark side. “Does Fir Councillor want the boy to be reserved for his own use?”

At that, the smirking Constable laughed heartily and threw an arm over the boy’s shoulder. The boy twitched.

“Nope. Throw him in the general pool. And believe me, he’s gonna be popular.” He winked in an intimate way that made Einara’s stomach twist. “Aren’tcha, Stefan?” Then, to Einara: “All you have to do is sign at the bottom to acknowledge receipt, sweetheart.”

Pointing out that the boy was clearly here under duress wouldn’t help him. And even if it would, that wasn’t the job.

Einara signed the top sheet, tugged off the others, and returned the clipboard to the Constable. She examined him in her cold, flat way. _Not your sweetheart._ “Thank you. Perhaps you’ll be on your way now, Fira? I imagine there are actual criminals somewhere that need apprehending by brave agents of the law.”

The other Constable must have had some shame. He stepped away, looking chastened. The smirker, unrepentant, ruffled the boy’s hair and pulled him in for a last kiss. The boy didn’t struggle.

Einara averted her eyes. When she raised them again, both Constables were tramping in the direction of the coldroom, leaving little puddles on the black slate that would need to be mopped up by the morning cleaning crew.

The boy stood where they’d left him, motionless as a crate of goods deposited by a supplier.

Hulda would want to know this news, but she could wait till morning. Most patrons were already with their whores of choice by this hour, and traffic at the desk was scant. Einara sent a quick message to Flax, asking him to fill in. Then she approached the boy. “Hello.”

Closer up, his trembling was obvious, but so was the set of his jaw. When he raised his eyes, she saw at once why someone had decided to send him here. Dark and secretive, they were ravishingly framed by long black lashes and paired with a generous mouth. From a Brothel keeper’s perspective, he was a find, but the silent defiance was a problem that would require careful handling.

“Will you come with me?” she asked, still neutral. “Or do you need to be restrained?”

The boy made a dry sound that might have been a laugh. “Had enough of that, thanks.”

He raised his hands, revealing red cuff marks on his wrists. Einara nodded, taking this in stride. Hulda had taught her it was unwise to show open sympathy toward a staffer—they always took advantage.

“You look like you could use a shower and a change of clothes before I show you to your room,” she said.

Without protest, the boy followed her out of the lobby and down one of the wood-paneled, artfully lit hallways designed to impress patrons of the establishment. As Einara swung the door to the staff quarters, he said, in a flat tone that seemed to mimic her own, “I’m not staying here.”

“No?” She ushered him through the door. “Are you going to talk your way back into Councillor Lindahl’s bed, then, if that’s how you got here?”

The boy’s shudder was visible. “There are other ways to leave.”

 _If a Councillor wants you here, there aren’t many._ Einara made a mental note to put him on suicide watch. “Do you have any habits we should know about?” she asked conversationally. “Sap?”

Another shudder. “They gave me . . . a lot. Don’t know how much.”

Einara led him through the fluorescent light, always an unpleasant shock after the mood lighting of the patrons’ areas. The hall was desolate and the dorms quiet; everyone was working at this hour. “Did you pass out?” she asked.

“Couple times.” The boy didn’t look at her.

They’d used sap to make him more pliable. Had he said no to the Councillor? With any luck, she would get the whole story out of him tonight; perhaps there was a politically useful tidbit in it. Every new whore was an opportunity to wrangle priceless information and other concessions from patrons.

She would compare notes with Kai, too, when he returned in the morning. Back in his heyday as a Jewel, Kai had been a favorite of Councillor Lindahl; he still had the sunflower tattoo on his nipple and the faint scars on his ass and thighs to prove it. Thank everything green, that work was behind him now, but he might have insight into the situation.

“Wait here,” Einara said at the door of the laundry room. From the cubbies inside, she snagged towels and sheets, a robe, basic garments in his size. In her early days here, she sometimes had laundry duty, and she still found the sight of the bleached, starchy linens oddly soothing. As if it were possible to wash away the uglier things they did here. “These are for you.”

The boy stood dazed for an instant, as if he’d forgotten he could do things for himself, before he took the pile of linens. “Thanks.”

Next stop was the shower room. She motioned him to set his bundle on the bench by the entrance, then handed him the washcloth, towel, and robe. “Take off that filthy coat. If you have a belt, give it to me.”

The boy smiled as if her concern were absurd. But he complied, stripping off the coat to show her he was wearing only a dingy worker’s coverall underneath.

“Take as long as you like,” Einara said. “If it’s more than ten minutes, I’ll check on you.”

If Kai had been free tonight, she might have asked him to come and offer his expertise. But he was in the warehouse studio in the Outer Ring, doing a reshoot on the finale of his latest sobstream into the wee hours. Anyway, after whatever had happened with those two Constables, the boy might be more at ease with a woman.

He was out of the shower in eight minutes, his bronze skin damp and his black hair finger-combed back from his face. She led him down the hall to the cells that were occupied by the Jewels.

Einara’s own cell had stood vacant since she moved into Hulda’s suite after the Director’s first stroke, seven years ago. “We’ll put you here for now,” she said, sliding the door and flipping on the light. “Unless you think you might need medical attention?”

The boy flinched. “No.”

Einara took the sheets from him and began making the stripped bed. “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. What do you like to be called? Stefan?”

The boy set the rest of the linens on the washstand and said in a hoarse but determined voice, “I’m not gonna work for you. I’m not going to be a whore. So you can stop being nice to me.”

Einara spread the comforter and fluffed the pillows. Then she straightened to face him. “So you think I’m trying to butter you up?”

He looked straight back. “What else would you be doing?”

“How cynical. But then, you’ve been working in the Sector, so I’m not surprised. Would you like some herbal tea?”

Stefan’s beautiful eyes narrowed. “Do I have a choice about anything here?”

 _Not much of anything._ Einara smiled pleasantly. “I’ll just be a moment brewing it.”

She locked him in behind her.

While the water boiled in the staff kitchenette, she considered her approach. This boy was from a high stratum of Reddan Laborer society. Like Kai in their early days, he might resist her manipulations out of sheer contempt.

But Kai had been a seasoned addict and a Brothel volunteer. This kid appeared to have been tied up and raped by the two Constables and perhaps others, who knew for how long.

Einara understood the aftermath of that kind of violence. The boy needed someone to treat him like a person without getting too close. He needed sleep and time. He needed more than she or anyone could give him, but that wasn’t the point.

Whatever happened, she wanted to have a plan in place for the boy before she told Hulda about him. The ancient director still insisted she was in charge, even as her grasp weakened.

Einara returned to find Stefan changed into his new clothes and lying on the bunk with his back to her. He sat up and took his tumbler, not meeting her eyes.

Until the first sip, when he shot her a startled look. “No sap in this?”

“I can add some if you’d like. If you’re worried about withdrawal.”

“No!” He still looked confused. “I don’t know, honestly. They gave me so much. But I don’t _want_ more.”

Did he think everyone in the Brothel was sweet-drowned? Some Brothel keepers had used sap to keep their staff drowsy and compliant, but Hulda preferred a whore with a clear head and sharp eyes and ears, and Einara agreed.

“Tell me about Councillor Lindahl,” she said.

Stefan’s body froze. At the same time, his face convulsed with rage. “I hope he freezes to death and Outers eat his guts. That’s all I have to say about Fir Councillor.”

He was so young. It might be easy to get him to spit out the story after all. Einara put a look of bland concern on her face. “I know something about the man. I gather he suffers from certain moral conflicts.”

“Moral, my ass. He’s a liar and a cheat _and_ a deeply sadistic, fucked-up prick. If I’d known what I was dealing with . . .” Stefan’s voice went hoarse again. “Are you trying to trick me into saying shit I could get in trouble for? _More_ trouble?”

Einara allowed herself a small laugh. “Why should I want to get you in trouble? What good would that do me?”

“Dunno.” He took a swallow. “I’m just confused. The Constables, you know, they didn’t ask me any questions.”

“I imagine not.” Einara took a sip of her own tea, burning her tongue. Low-tier Laborers were straightforward, but these more privileged youths could be a bit mysterious, hiding layers on layers. Still, if she’d won over Kai, she could win this one over, too.

Of course, Kai was more than a tool to her; he was a friend, an ally, and the only person who could have gotten her through the past fifteen years in this miserable place. He insisted that he wanted to marry her as soon as Hulda died, and she hadn’t said no. But he _was_ also a tool, wasn’t he? A damn good one.

She pressed to the heart of the matter. “Did Lindahl give you to the Constables to punish you?”

Stefan’s face shuttered again. “He can’t give me. Doesn’t own me. He never did, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He raised those defiant eyes. “I’m not a Councillor’s piece. Never slept a night in a Strutter’s bed. I stand on my own two feet.”

Einara nodded, taking dispassionate note of his flair for drama. The heroes of Kai’s streams were always giving similar speeches about pride and honor and independence. She supposed it reminded Drudge viewers of the token portion of freedom their lives allowed them.

“And yet you managed to offend the Councillor, somehow,” she pointed out. “Lindahl may be twisted, but he always has reasons for what he does.”

“Oh, does he?” Stefan set his tumbler down hard. “Well, then, maybe _you_ can explain to me why he fucked up my entire life for no reason I can fathom.”

The boy was itching to tell his story; all he needed was a push. Einara held his gaze, letting her eyes moisten with sympathy at last. She nodded: _Tell me_.

The story was simple and ugly and not uncommon. Born to respectable Laborers, Stefan had one goal throughout his childhood and adolescence: to be Raised. His test scores were solid, but not stellar. So, being a smart boy with no illusions, he set out to get himself some patronage.

 _Why did you want to be an Upstart so badly? Why not just overthrow them?_ But there was no point in asking an Oslov those questions.

At his kellthavina, Stefan befriended high-named classmates. He made himself agreeable to his haughty new friends, doing assignments for them and—he delicately implied to Einara—making himself sexually available. Eventually, one of these kids, whose uncle was a high official, suggested that Stefan meet Councillor Lindahl. Stefan was a virgin, at least technically, and the Councillor liked boys who were “fresh.” Perhaps he could give Stefan a leg up on his Notification.

Stefan was relieved to find Councillor Lindahl polite, even a little shy with him. Feeling he had the upper hand, he made no bones about the deal he wanted to make: his virginity in exchange for an Upstart Notification. Lindahl hemmed and hawed and used a lot of euphemisms, but essentially he said yes.

Stefan regretted the deal immediately.

First, Lindahl made him undress and stand at the foot of the bed and answer questions about his aspirations and his academic record. This went on “for an _hour_ ,” Stefan said. “That’s when I knew there was something wrong with him. But I went along with it because we’re trained to be respectful, right? He made me keep my hands behind my back. It was humiliating.” After a moment, he added, “I’m only telling you this because you can’t tell anybody who matters. Nobody cares what happens to people like you or me.”

“I know,” Einara said encouragingly. Poor boy—and yet, she couldn’t help wondering why so many seemingly bright young Oslovs were also so naïve.

“Finally, he told me to get in bed, and I was so relieved,” Stefan continued. “I figured, how bad could it be?” He shivered. “It was just, nobody’d ever treated me like a whore before. He didn’t even try to make me comfortable. Didn’t talk to me like I was a person. Just rolled me over and used me. It was over quick, thank everything green, but I left there feeling dirty all over.”

He flushed and dropped his eyes, probably mentally comparing that first bad experience with whatever he’d endured over the past few days. “Must sound pathetic to you. Like I was a stupid kid.”

“A bad first time is a bad first time,” Einara said, trying not to remember her own. “So, I’m guessing Fir Councillor didn’t keep up his end of the bargain?”

Stefan flushed again. “Yeah. When I got Notified, it was months afterward. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t dare call him out? When I found out, I went to see him. I was steaming. He gave me a bullshit speech about the integrity of the process and offered me a good Drudge post in the Sector. I accepted—what else could I do? But I didn’t forget. And the more I thought about how he flat-out lied to me, the angrier I got.”

High Laborers always seemed to feel a certain entitlement to what their “betters” had, as if they knew on some level the division was arbitrary. “So,” Einara surmised, “you decided to get back at Lindahl?”

Revenge—there was a motive she could respect.

Naïve as he was, Stefan had some political savvy. Working on the staff of another Councillor, he observed sessions and committee meetings until he figured out who Lindahl’s nemesis was. “Councillor Lindthardt. They’ve been rivals basically their whole lives. So, I thought it all out, and then I went to Lindthardt and told him all about what Lindahl did to me.”

Einara had never set foot in the Sector, but she knew where this was going. “You thought he’d leap on the evidence of Lindahl’s corruption and use it to bring him down.”

Stefan hung his head. “I was such an idiot.”

Councillor Lindthardt listened to the whole story. When it was over, he made a polite pass at Stefan. Stefan politely turned him down, and Lindthardt politely said he would take the information under advisement because corruption was a very serious thing.

Less than twenty-four hours later, as Stefan walked to the tram stop, two Constables cornered and seized him, placing him under “arrest.” They brought him to a vacant dentist’s office in a disused building, where they shackled him to the chair, forced sap down his throat, and—he shrugged. “Well, they took turns. Don’t think I need to tell you any more.”

Einara noted how he held his hands, as if he were using one to keep the other from visibly trembling. “How long were you there?”

Another shrug shook his fashionably long bangs into his eyes, veiling his expression. “Two days? Three? There wasn’t a clock. They’d just come and go. Even _he_ came once—Councillor Lindahl—but only to watch. He said I was getting what I deserved for trying to pervert the system, and then he told me I was going to spend the rest of my life _here_.”

“Why do you think Lindthardt tattled on you to his enemy?” Class solidarity was probably a sufficient motive, but there might be more.

“Maybe he wanted something to hold over Lindahl. Maybe he was just mad I rejected him.” Stefan swallowed visibly. “I only told you all that so you’d know: I’d rather die than sell myself to an Upstart ever again. And if you try to make me . . .”

The words hung in the air, reminding Einara again of dramastreams. “I see,” she said, “and I respect your resolution. But you do realize, whoring is our business.”

Stefan’s eyes glowed with tears or anger or both. “It’s not _my_ business.”

There were a wealth of ways to force him to comply with whatever they wanted him to be here, but Einara saw no point in enumerating those ways just yet. She rose and cleared the tea things. “Thank you for your honesty, Stefan. The more I know about your situation, the better I can help you.”

Stefan made a strangled, derisive sound. “ _Help_ me?”

“Yes. Help you.” She opened the door and stood in it, holding the tray. “But right now, the best way you can help yourself is by getting a nice long sleep. I’m going to leave you to it. Are you sure you don’t want a nip of sap first?”

Stefan crawled under the blankets and turned his back to her without a word.

When Einara returned fifteen minutes later to check on him, she pretended not to notice that his shoulders were heaving with sobs. When she returned forty minutes later, he was fast asleep.


	2. Middle of Nowhere

As Bors Dartán crept his way around the government perimeter wall, cinderblock and barbed wire stretching ten meters into the cloudy sky, he realized he wasn’t alone.

In the vastness of the Wastes, company was the last thing he expected. But a lifetime of spying had given him a sixth sense for when someone was watching him, and someone or something was. Right now.

Not the camera eyes he could see atop the wall of the unmarked enclosure. In his pack, Bors carried a device that scrambled government surveillance signals when he approached, keeping him effectively invisible. So, who?

His nerves made him stumble over a scrubby bush, wet from recent rains. The taiga in the foothills of the Southern Range was experiencing its brief summer, deciduous trees adding paler notes to the spruce and fur.

It was easier to explore these woods without several feet of snow on the ground, but the uncontrolled growth put Bors on edge. Oslovs weren’t meant to live outdoors. Several times he’d seen wolves, and once an enormous bear! Since then, he’d armed himself with a lightweight rifle.

The eyes he felt on him now might belong to a ravenous beast, but he didn’t think so. Maybe he wasn’t the only one searching for the Sanctioned Sweetbush.

_No sudden moves. Don’t tip them off._ Bors paused for a 360 review of his surroundings, giving his spy’s instincts free rein.

The trees had been cut back around the enclosure, but only for a meter or so. Beyond the perimeter, the forest rose like a second wall, dense hemlock and feathery arrows of spruce blocking the horizon.

A twig cracked above him _._ Keeping his head level, Bors raised his eyes to the canopy. He’d been fooled by nesting birds before.

But no. In one of the larger pines, he caught a flicker of movement. A figure perched six meters up in a fork of the hefty boughs, and this was no bear.

Bors’s reflexes took over. When he started his periodic explorations of the Wastes, nearly two years ago, he had planned exhaustively for contingencies.

Four strong strides brought him to the edge of the forest, while he slipped the rifle from the sling on his back. Even as a first-class Int/Sec analyst, he didn’t have clearance to requisition a weapon, but the firearm had been easy enough to purchase in the Outer Ring. So had several lessons from a sap-addled army veteran. Whenever he visited the Wastes, Bors took the opportunity to practice on a makeshift range, and his marksmanship was excellent.

Once he had a good angle, he propped the rifle’s stock on his shoulder, sighted at the figure in the tree, and scraped back the slide. He barked, “I’m an officer of the Republic. You’re trespassing on government property.”

The figure in the tree gave a brief start, then froze like a startled animal.

“Get down immediately and approach with your hands raised,” Bors droned in an official tone. Never mind that he was also a trespasser here. The best defense was a good offense.

Hands shot into the air, and a man’s alarmed voice called, “Coming, Officer. But there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m a Biologist, fourth class.”

The accent was pure upper-crust Redda, putting Bors newly on edge. This was no hostile Outer, as he’d imagined, or even a Free Northman straying far from Thurskein. Still, he kept the gun trained on the slight figure as it slid down the pine with surprising grace and landed lightly on the forest floor.

“Walk toward me. Hands in the air.” What was an Upstart doing all the way out here? Bors hoped the man didn’t have connections in the Sector.

The stranger obeyed. He was about Bors’s age, dressed in a utilitarian outdoor coverall that blended into the foliage. His auburn hair was shaggy, and he needed a shave, but the refined features and unapologetic carriage all but confirmed that he was an Upstart, some researcher who’d gotten lost in the woods.

Except he didn’t look lost. Descending from that tree, he’d seemed quite at home.

“Pack on the ground. Then hands up again.” Bors disarmed the rifle and slung it over his shoulder. He had a bad feeling about this, but now he’d started playing his role, he couldn’t deviate from it.

He grabbed the stranger by a shoulder. The man tensed, but he stood still and allowed Bors to frisk him with professional efficiency.

No weapons, just a notebook full of tiny scribbling, all numbers and words in a language Bors had never seen before. After a few days in the woods, it was strange to stand so close to someone; Bors could practically feel the man’s breath on his face. “Do you have your ID card with you,” he asked, “or do I need to read your chip?”

The man extended his hand palm down, his expression resigned. “I’m on a specimen hunt. I like to eat my lunch in that tree because it’s comfortable.”

“And it just happens to have a view into the government enclosure?” Bors reached for the chip reader on his utility belt. Why hadn’t _he_ thought of climbing a tree for a better look?

The man’s rigid posture was wilting a little. “I wasn’t spying, Officer,” he said almost meekly as Bors ran the reader over the back of his hand. “I already know everything that’s in these woods. I live out here.”

“Nobody lives out here.”

But the data on the screen said otherwise: The man was indeed a Biologist, officially residing in the complex of Upstart vacation villas situated five or six miles down into the valley. Name: Linnett, Valgund Georg.

Bors nearly dropped the reader. A Linnett? Why did he have such utterly shit luck?

The Linnetts practically owned the Sector. One of them was a Councillor, another an Admin of Thurskein. He’d never heard of this Valgund, but if the man lived in a vacation villa, he must be part of the important branch of the family.

When Bors first started his explorations out here, after his promotion to first-class analyst, Einara had warned him they might be more trouble than they were worth. Maybe he’d finally proved her right.

He put the reader away, managing to keep his hands steady even as his cheeks flushed. “I could report you for this, Fir Linnett. I imagine you think I wouldn’t dare.”

Most high Upstarts would take offense at such a threat, particularly from a humble officer who hadn’t even supplied his own name. Valgund Linnett simply looked at Bors. “I saw your camp in the clearing a mile to the west. You should stay farther from the blueberry patches—the bears are hungry this year.”

The flush on Bors’s face became a bonfire. An officer assigned to guard this area wouldn’t be camping in the open. A scan of his own chip would reveal that he was a Redda-based Int/Sec analyst with no jurisdiction out here—one who was currently supposed to be vacationing in the less grand complex not far from the villas.

If this Linnett was up to no good in the woods, neither was Bors—at least not up to anything his superiors would have defined as good. And if he were caught and couldn’t explain himself, he would never be able to right the wrongs that pressed on his beloved Republic. He would never see Kai again.

“You’ve been spying on me,” he said in the inhumanly level voice he’d perfected for dealing with volatile assets. “Following me.”

The Linnett tensed, clearly hearing the danger in his voice. “Just today, and only out of curiosity. I come out here all the time, but I never see anybody.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Bors said coldly, as if he knew anything about it. “I suppose you have a permit for your specimen gathering?”

“Of course. It’s on file at the University.” The Linnett narrowed his eyes, gesturing toward the perimeter wall. “That complex? It’s a decoy installation. Used for storage, completely unmanned as far as I can tell. If you’re looking for anything interesting, it’s not there.”

When had Bors’s heartbeat gotten so loud? “I’m well aware of that, and I’m not ‘looking for’ anything,” he said, though this cursed Linnett had probably seen him mapping the complex’s perimeter. “Dartán, Bors, at your service. Int/Sec analyst, first class.”

Linnett turned a little green, as many Upstarts and Laborers alike did when they heard the name of Bors’s agency. “I’m sorry, Fir Analyst. I shouldn’t have questioned you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” Bors steadied his voice, trying to ignore the prickle of cold sweat on the back of his neck. The Linnett must not be confident that his important relatives would protect him from Int/Sec; that was one point in Bors’s favor.

“I find it interesting that you think I would be looking for anything in the Wastes,” he said, going on the offensive again. “Is that something you often encounter? People looking for things?”

Valgund looked downright trapped. “No. Well, I mean, _I_ go in searching for samples. Medicinal fungi, mainly, for the research labs in Redda. But other than that . . .”

_Fungi._ The mocking voice of Evorina Grenfeill rose from the depths of Bors’s memory, speaking a name: _Rhizoctonia muirthorni._ A fungus that would, if injected into the muirthorn pine, prevent it from making usable sap for seven to ten years.

When Grenfeill first dropped that ready-made sabotage plan in his lap, Bors had imagined it would be easy. He hadn’t thought it would take him thirteen years just to get enough leisure time and ration-credit to come here and _look_ for the Sanctioned Sweetbush. Two years into his search, he’d ruled out a handful of unmarked government complexes that definitely weren’t secret pine plantations, but he felt no closer to finding the one that was.

This Valgund Linnett knew about fungi, though, and he knew the woods. If he had secrets of his own, could he actually be useful?

“What about the Northmen?” Bors asked, returning to his interrogation. “Big Drudges with beards—I find it hard to believe you haven’t seen some out here. They’re known to roam this forest in defiance of the laws that keep them safe in Thurskein.”

Valgund’s lip curled a little as Bors said “safe,” as if he also saw the absurdity of imprisoning Laborers in walled cities for their own “good.” “I don’t think I’ve seen any runaway Drudges. But then, I stay away from people as much as I can.”

“Yet you live in an R-11 dwelling. As the guest of a Councillor or high Admin, I presume.” Bors woke the screen of his reader and scrolled down, in case he’d missed something useful in Linnett’s record.

He had. Oh, he had. Int/Sec codes and links to files and court records crawled down the screen.

Valgund Linnett had a record of Hargist Dissidence going all the way back to his school days. After an incident in which he and his best friend attempted to flee the city together, which resulted in the friend’s death, he had been confined to moral rehab for a decade. There he stubbornly refused to recant his nihilist beliefs until his sister and mother pulled strings to free him. They must have found him his current living situation, figuring he was less likely to get in trouble in the middle of nowhere.

Bors slipped the reader back on his belt, feeling a lot more confident. “I don’t mean any disrespect to your family, Fir Linnett. But do you know how this looks? You lurking out here on the perimeter of a classified facility, with your record?”

He hoped Valgund would cringe again the way he had when Bors mentioned Int/Sec. But maybe Bors’s two minutes on the reader had given Valgund time to gather his courage. He looked Bors straight in the eye. “Are you going to report me, Fir Dartán?”

_You know I won’t. Can’t._ “Biologists don’t interest me. I assume you know better than to tell anyone you saw me here.”

“Of course, Fir Analyst.”

“Then I think we can go our separate ways.” Bors gave the Linnett a long, cold glare to remind him that he could always find himself back in that moral rehab cell. “I suggest you be more careful next time about where you climb trees.” He waved. “Go on. Keep collecting your specimens. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Valgund Linnett turned and walked obediently away. After four or five steps, he stopped in his tracks and spoke without turning: “I do see the Northmen sometimes. I know what they’re looking for.”

_The same thing I am._ “If you see the Northmen, you should report them,” Bors said, his heart thudding.

“Oh, they’re gone well before I can do that. They don’t take notice of me.” Valgund took another step away from Bors. “They probably should, though. When I say I know everything that’s in these woods—well, I know _everything_ that’s in these woods. If I felt like it, I could tell them exactly where to find what they’re looking for. I could probably tell you, too.”

And with that, he resumed walking, leaving Bors gaping behind him. By the time the spy regained his faculties enough to speed off on his trail, the wayward Linnett was gone as if the trees had swallowed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it wasn't exactly a meet-cute. ;) You may have noticed that Bors was so busy looking up Valgund's history of Hargist delinquency that he didn't bother to check on _whose_ villa Valgund was living in. He'll find out in their next chapter. :)


	3. Permanent Guests

“Come, my dear. Come.” Hulda Dartán beckoned Einara over to her bed. The room stank of disinfectant. A med-aide bent over the old woman, adjusting the leads of the portable electrocardiograph machine that had once again taken up residence at her bedside.

“I heard you had another episode last night.” Einara pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down. “Gastetter didn’t tell me till this morning. I could kill her.”

Hulda croaked with laughter. “Please, my love. I’ve told you to stop pretending to give a damn about my health when you’re eagerly awaiting my death.”

Einara shot a glance at the med-aide. He gave her a sour look.

“Don’t say such things, Fir’n Director,” she said primly. “You know I want to see you on your feet again, as soon as possible.”

Hulda rolled her eyes, then waved at the med-aide. “Leave us for a few minutes. I’m fine. It was the tiniest episode of atrial fibrillation.”

“You don’t look fine,” Einara said as the aide withdrew into the other room.

It was an understatement. Nearing ninety, Hulda had become a mummylike facsimile of her former self, skin stretched painfully thin over the bones of her face. She had endured two strokes and one infarction, and her physician said the next might kill her. But her eyes still focused keenly, full of desire and determination, and her mind was as sharp as ever.

Einara failed to see why this scheming Oslov should enjoy a monstrously long life when those of her own mother and sister had been cut short. But it hurt to see any creature lose its vital force, even a poisonous serpent. Like it or not, she had spent nearly eighteen years as this woman’s apprentice, prisoner, and lover, watching her twist and game an unfair system with enormous skill, and Hulda had won a measure of her admiration. She’d been anticipating the director’s death so long that sometimes, perversely, she found herself wanting to put it off a little longer.

She didn’t tell Kai about these moments of foolishness. In his mind, Hulda’s decline was nothing but a win for them both.

“You should rest for at least a ten-day,” she said. “I can handle the tally and spot inspections.”

Hulda waved this aside. “I’ll be back on my feet tomorrow. How are tonight’s bookings looking?”

Einara handed over a set of printouts from the primitive computer in Hulda’s office. She waited while the old woman ran a finger down the grid of names and time slots, nodding with satisfaction. “Not bad for a work night. Little Tourmaline seems to be as popular as we hoped. How was last night’s tally?”

“Twenty-three vials, Fir’n.” Tips received by the staff, minus the portion they were allowed to keep to feed their own addictions.

“I’d like to see it up to thirty.” Hulda clicked her tongue. “Do you think any of the Jewels are holding out on you?”

“Jasper, maybe. But I’m playing a long game with him.” These everyday Brothel politics weren’t what Einara had come to discuss. She was fully on top of the job, and Hulda knew it. “Fir’n Director, you have an inspection of the boiler scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Do you really need to take care of that personally?”

Hulda’s eyes narrowed. They both knew “boiler inspection” was the code phrase she used in her calendar for her clandestine meetings with representatives of the True Hearth in the Brothel’s basement.

“I’m particular about the workings of my boiler,” the old woman said. “I expect to be quite capable of attending in person.”

Einara’s throat tightened. Did Fir’n Director think she was immortal? “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to bring me along. Unless you want the boiler to languish once you stop being able to climb all those stairs?”

Hulda chuckled at the tortured metaphor. “You _are_ eager, aren’t you? Do you really dream you can broker some sort of agreement between my friends in the basement and those True Northmen you’re so fascinated by?”

Einara shrugged, holding her anger in check. What exactly had Hulda and her revolutionary comrades accomplished in all these years? As far as Einara could tell, all they did was draft reformist legislation and blackmail the more conservative Councillors into voting for it. They were patching up the nasty little clockwork world of Oslov, trying to improve its workings, when it needed to be smashed to smithereens.

She still carried her mother’s and sister’s deaths inside her, fresh wounds that could never close until they were avenged. If she couldn’t discover which Oslov or group of Oslovs was directly responsible, after nearly a quarter century of trying, perhaps she’d have to slaughter every last one of them.

_Empty words_ , an angry little voice whispered inside her. Whether Einara was kissing Kai or tallying sap vials or lecturing staffers on hygiene, that other self was always there, its rage burning like a flame. _I’m biding my time,_ she reassured it.

“I don’t think anything,” she said in her meekest voice, though she knew it never fooled Hulda. “But you keep saying you want me to succeed you. Don’t you trust me with this part of the job?”

Hulda’s eyes bored into her. “I don’t trust you period, and I never have. Not since I realized you’d murdered my nephew. After I’m dead, you can make as much of a mess as you want, chasing your vengeance, but until then, you’ll obey me.” She sighed. “And if you have any sense, you’ll give up your barbaric blood feud and enjoy the perfectly good life you have.”

“I was only asking.” It was time to change the subject to something that would tickle the director’s scheming reflexes. “Something else happened last night—I’ve been meaning to tell you. Councillor Lindahl sent us a gift.”

Hulda’s face brightened. “Come sit up here, my girl. Massage my shoulders. Ugh, these machines; one needs a human touch. What sort of gift?”

Einara perched on the bed, pulled back the director’s robe, and began rubbing her bare shoulders. The woman’s skin was so loose, the flesh like wet clay.

Einara herself was forty now—how long would it take her still-supple body to fall apart? Kai claimed she was still highly desirable, but she thought it might be nice to be a crone. Hulda’s lack of beauty had certainly served her well, helping her wield power without drawing notice.

“We received the gift of a new whore,” she said, and then told Hulda the story of Stefan, the bruised and sullen young man who was still sleeping in her own cell.

Hulda nodded in recognition as the story proceeded to its inevitable conclusion. “Poor puppy,” she said when Einara was done. “The boy had no idea what he was tangling with.”

“Do you think Lindahl meant to trick him?” Nothing Einara knew about Lindahl impressed her. The Councillor was a humorless true believer in Whybergism, but deep down, according to Kai’s analysis, Lindahl suffered from insecurity, fearing he didn’t merit the gifts life had given him. He inflicted pain on whores and other subordinates because he wanted to hurt himself.

Hulda snorted. “Lindahl’s a harmless fool. He made a promise and forgot about it. When the boy tried a power play against him, he had to teach him a lesson.”

Einara rose and stretched. She hated playing nursemaid, though she’d gotten good at it. “That reminds me, I should go check on our new acquisition. And you should let the aide poke and prod you some more.”

“I want you to bring the boy to see me soon. Do you think he’s pretty enough to be a Jewel?”

“Maybe. But I’d like to give him a few days’ grace period.” Einara ran her fingertips lightly across the director’s shoulders, asking without asking. “He’s adamant that he won’t serve patrons.”

“Poor fool. Two days to adjust, and then you find a use for him.”

“I’d hate to see him do something desperate. It’s not often an asset like that drops in your lap.”

“You feel sorry for the lad.” Hulda captured Einara’s hand and gave it a kiss. “How sweet.”

Einara laughed coldly. No Oslov deserved her pity—not Stefan, not Hulda, not even Kai. “When have you ever seen me feel sorry for anyone?”

She left Hulda to the aide’s ministrations and found Kai in the sunroom, sprawled out on the couch with dark glasses protecting his eyes. “Is she dead yet?” he asked in a lazy drawl.

She sat beside him. “Not even close.”

Kai groaned theatrically, then pulled her down on top of him. He was a little stockier now, some of the sleek muscle gone to fat, but he still had his brash good looks—and his vanity. “That woman is going to live to be a hundred. Why can’t we just get married now? She can’t stop us.”

Again with the marriage business. Though she cared about him in her way, and often spent the night in his room when she wasn’t with the director, Einara would never understand why this official bond was so important to him. “We need to be free of her first,” she said. “I need to be in charge here.”

“You keep saying that, but she’s just a silly old vulture.” Kai tugged her close and gave her a kiss.

“She’s the vulture I have to sleep and wake up with.” _And pleasing_ both _of you can be exhausting._ She stroked his still-thick chestnut hair. “Did you hear back from Diversions about your stream proposal?”

Kai’s face brightened. He released her and sat up, no longer a sulky whore but a craftsman who took pride in his work. “The message came this morning. They said yes—d’you believe that? They want changes, of course; they’ve got all kinds of notes about ‘preserving the dignity of labor’ and avoiding any hint of ‘nihilism.’ But they said yes!”

“I knew they would.” Einara pressed against him. Actually, she was a little surprised.

Kai had spent the past two years writing a sobstream based on his own life story, pouring his heart and soul into it. He’d scripted streams before, as well as shooting them, but this one, he said, was different. It wasn’t just another hackneyed tearjerker designed to please the government censors. It was his story and his vision, to be shot by his camera. The work he was born to do.

Einara liked Kai best when he was absorbed in writing or shooting or editing, his eyes keen and free from the fog of addiction. But could any stream be so important? To her eyes, they were all wish-fulfillment fantasies for lovelorn Oslov teenagers.

Oh well. Everyone had to have an obsession. She had her vengeance, and he had this.

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “When will you start casting?”

“Tomorrow or the day after, while I rewrite for the censor.”

She tickled his belly where the shirt exposed a strip of skin. “Are you sure you can find someone mind-blowingly handsome enough to play a hero based on you?”

“That _will_ be a problem. Hey!” He imprisoned her hands. “Seriously, though, our current stable of Jewels can’t act worth a shit. Ker Keirannen will want the part, but he’s too old, and his head’s so far up his ass he’s impossible to work with. I want someone new.”

“You’ll have to hold an open call.” Then she remembered what she’d been discussing with Hulda. “Unless maybe our new boy would serve? He’s from the right background.”

“New boy?” Kai frowned. “I didn’t hear about a new boy.”

“He came in last night under irregular circumstances, courtesy of your old friend Councillor Lindahl.” Einara described the situation, finishing with Stefan’s insistence that he would never be a whore. “Hulda will want to use the usual methods on him. Force-feed him sap, turn him into a helpless addict, give him to the less scrupulous patrons till he learns to comply.”

Kai shuddered against her. “Poor kid.”

“I know. It would be a shame, wouldn’t it?” She was conscious of manipulating her lover, though she wasn’t sure why she’d taken Stefan’s part. Perhaps just to annoy Hulda. “And I think he has a flair for drama. You should have heard the monologue he delivered to me about Lindahl’s perfidy.”

Kai laughed, but his eyes were troubled. “Lindahl must really hate the kid, or fear him. The way he punished the boy is nasty, even for him.”

“Are you scared that putting Stefan in your stream would upset Fir Councillor?” Einara made her eyes big. “I’ve never known you to let a Strutter drive your casting decisions before.”

If Kai wanted Stefan for the stream, she might be able to get him a longer grace period from Hulda—a few ten-days or even a month.

It wasn’t that she was squeamish, she told herself. Occasionally a Brothel director had to break new whores as well as train them; that was the job. Not all new staffers took easily or willingly to the work. Stefan, though, might not react well to being broken. It would be a shame to lose someone with his combination of looks and haughtiness; patrons ate that up.”

And maybe he reminded her a bit of herself, back when she arrived here too numb and shattered even to speak.

“When did I say I’m scared of Lindahl?” Kai kissed her on the forehead and stood up. “If the boy can act and looks right and isn’t an asshole, maybe I will cast him. I gotta say, though, considering how few pretty boys I’ve found that can do a line reading, the odds aren’t in his favor.”

Einara followed him to the door. She would check on Stefan now—take him to the lavatory, bring him breakfast, and see if he was still as stubborn as he’d been last night. She wouldn’t tell him about the stream yet; there was no point in giving him false hope.

“Just give him a chance,” she said.

***

Someone was following Valgund Linnett on his daily tramp through the taiga. And he had a good idea who.

Just to be sure, he climbed one of his favorite climbing trees, sat himself in the fork about twelve meters up, and used his binoculars to survey the thickets below.

A cold, wet snow was starting to collect on the ground, still green with summer’s foliage. Valgund hadn’t tried to cover his tracks, so he figured the spy was in the bushes, waiting for him to come down and resume his hike. Maybe the poor fool was expecting Valgund to take him straight to whatever he was hoping to find out here.

What _was_ Bors Dartán hoping to find? The Northmen came out here looking for the Sanctioned Sweetbush, dreaming of sabotaging it. Sometimes Valgund saw plainclothes government functionaries doing their work, surveying or maintaining power lines. Occasionally he met fellow scientists. But this was his first spy.

Yes! There was that miserable little Dartán, crouched in the bushes. He probably thought he’d hidden himself cunningly. Maybe he was good at urban espionage, but out here in the woods, he might as well be a caribou crashing through the bracken in search of a mate.

Over the past two days since their unpleasant first meeting, Valgund had resisted the urge to message his mother and ask her to check the Int/Sec employment roster for a Bors Dartán. Whether the man was an imposter or a real spy doing spy business, his appearance boded no good. Valgund had been relieved to see his camp vanish after their meeting, and he’d hoped never to see him again.

Too bad.

Valgund had taunted the man in a way he knew was stupid and dangerous. Never mind that he himself was just doing his job like a good little Oslov. The fact that he kept his eyes open in the woods, that he knew secrets, made him a security risk.

But being yelled at and frisked and lectured about his past had pissed him off.

He munched on a protein bar from his pack. He could wait up here all night; his work for the day was done, and his jacket and poncho kept him warm and dry. He had a feeling Bors Dartán was shivering in the bushes.

Letting the man know his cover was blown would just compound his earlier mistakes. But this was getting boring.

When his lower back started to ache, Valgund climbed out of the tree. The snow was thickening, covering their footprints, and he felt confident that he could lead the spy a pretty chase through the woods. Once he’d lost him, he would take the shortest route home.

He half expected Dartán to yell at him as he left the small clearing, perhaps to threaten him again with that rifle. But only a rustle in the bushes told him the man was on his trail.

Twenty minutes of brisk hiking later, Valgund stopped short and turned in a circle. The arctic evening was still bright, but flying snow limited visibility to a meter or so, and he’d stopped hearing Dartán’s cracks and rustles a ways back down the hill. The spy must have called it a night.

Valgund was surprised to feel a bit disappointed. Almost lonely.

He turned and headed the way he’d come, homebound. The villa would be full of shadows, no one there to welcome him; he would light the gas fire and defrost some soup. Take a long bath. Read himself to sleep.

It would be more than a month before he had company. The Council was keeping Tilrey and his mother busy, while Gersha and Vera spent every waking hour helping Ceill prepare for his exams. The boy was nearly eighteen now, focused on next year’s Notification.

Valgund didn’t mind, he reminded himself as he trudged through the darkness, barely wincing when the wind whipped flakes in his face. He was solitary by nature, and this arrangement certainly beat his old cell. Sometimes, though, it got quiet.

Movement flickered up ahead through a hunched stand of hemlock.

Valgund froze. Then he crept forward, back in stealth mode, to get a good view among the branches without being seen.

Bors Dartán sat on a rock, visibly shivering in his inadequate city coverall. Snow dripped from the rim of his hood. He was consulting his handheld, the screen washing his meager, worried features.

As Valgund watched, Bors slid down off the rock and walked two paces to the right, then two paces to the left, holding out his device like a Feudal offering. Searching for the signal he needed to guide him out of the whiteout.

Valgund was tempted to leave the blasted spy right there—it would serve him right. But something more powerful—pity?—made him step out of the thicket. “Lost?”

Bors spun to face him. His thin face was deathly pale, screenlight glinting on his oversized glasses. “You followed me?”

“Turnabout is fair play, I’ve heard.”

“Fuck you.” But the curse had no force behind it. “You knew I was there the whole time?”

“I told you I know what goes on in these woods.” Valgund stepped closer, hoping Bors wouldn’t decide to whip out the rifle again. “The signal fades in and out during storms. It’s best not to risk them unless you really know the terrain.”

Bors made a frustrated noise. Without the rifle in his hands, he looked smaller, almost puny. “I wasn’t lying about being Int/Sec. I could have you hauled into a cell for your . . . strange behavior.”

Valgund laughed. The storm and the man’s shivering sapped the threat of menace. “I’ve been behaving strangely all my life. Look, you need to warm up. Where’s your new camp?”

After a brief hesitation, Bors said, “Don’t have one. I thought I’d do a day trip.”

“And amuse yourself by trying to catch me doing something naughty.” Valgund picked up the spy’s ridiculously huge pack and slung it over his own shoulder. “C’mon. I’m going back to civilization, if that sounds good to you.”

“You know the way?” Bors’s voice faltered. “Without a signal?”

“Sure.” Valgund swung Bors’s pack off his shoulder again and tugged off his own poncho. “Put that on and come with me. If your fingers get numb, rub your hands together. You’ll be fine.”

Bors stopped making a fuss. He put on the poncho and followed Valgund down the hill, though he did insist on lugging his own pack.

They walked in silence, plowing through soggy drifts in the strange, pearly snowlight. An inch or so covered the trail, but Valgund was fairly sure he could have walked this one blindfolded.

At the bottom of the hill, he stopped to give the spy a chance to catch his breath and pointed out the yellow lights of the villas in the valley. “Not far now.”

Bors wiped his face with a sleeve. “I didn’t think it could snow like this in August.”

“In the mountains? Sure.”

About a kilometer later, with the woods forming a tunnel above them and driblets of snow plopping on their heads, Bors spoke again. “What was I supposed to do? After what you told me last time, it was like you wanted me to follow you.”

“You scared me, throwing your weight around,” Valgund admitted, too wet and tired to lie. “I don’t like being scared.”

Behind him, the spy snorted. “What does a Linnett have to be scared of?”

“Plenty. You quoted my record to me. And you’re Int/Sec.” If Bors were here on official business, Valgund might very well still be screwed. But he had a strong hunch that wasn’t the case. “Or _are_ you Int/Sec?” he asked slyly. “You read my chip, but you didn’t show me your ID. If you want me to trust you or help you, you’re not doing a great job.”

He held his breath, knowing he’d gone out on a limb. Bors had never asked for his help—hadn’t done anything, in fact, except tell him to clear out.

Bors stopped in his tracks and pulled something from his utility belt. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said in his prissy, bossy way, and aimed the reader at his own left wrist.

The signal was back. Valgund examined the info that scrolled down the screen: Int/Sec analyst, first class. A shiver snaked down his spine, and he very nearly missed another point of interest, further down in the record: The names of Dartán’s parents had blue dots beside them. Laborers.

“You were Raised,” he said as they kept walking, Bors tucking the reader back in its pouch.

The spy’s whole frame stiffened. “I’m aware of that.”

“I . . . was just noting it.”

“Don’t hold back, Fir Linnett. I’ve heard it all.”

Valgund considered telling the man two of his best friends were Laborers—Tilrey and Mal Sollentaal—before realizing how phony that would sound. “I know you can’t tell me what you’re doing out here,” he said, setting a brisk pace. “My mother is head of the Int/Sec committee, as it happens. But I would never go to her over something like this, which is clearly your business—unless I had no choice.”

Panting to keep up, Bors said, “You’re not very good at intimidating me.”

_I’m a scientist. You’re the one with the gun._ “I just—I have a quiet life, okay? I don’t like trouble.”

“Nor do I,” Bors said, an edge on his voice.

They hiked the rest of the way in silence, but, to Valgund’s surprise, the tension seemed to have eased. Maybe Bors had taken his measure and decided he wasn’t a threat. Maybe they were both just exhausted.

As they crossed the skiing field toward the round yellow lights of the villas, Valgund surprised himself again by asking, “Do you want to come in and warm up? I imagine it’s a ways to wherever you’re staying. I’m alone,” he added—then wished he could take it back, because it sounded like a sexual invitation. It had been _years_ since he’d done anything like that, and he certainly wasn’t going to start with an Int/Sec agent.

It wasn’t that Bors was unattractive. Spindly and unassuming, yes, but the scrappiness was starting to grow on Valgund. Once you knew the man’s origins, it was clear his attitude was overcompensation.

Bors didn’t seem to read anything into the invitation. “Thanks. I’ll just stay long enough for a second wind.”

Valgund led the way up the steps of the villa. In the coldroom, he helped Bors strip off the sopping poncho and hung it up before removing his own gear.

“I can loan you a dry parka,” he said, already starting to regret the invitation. A stranger in his refuge felt all wrong, like ants crawling up and down his spine. Gersha and Tilrey were the gracious hosts; he never had visitors of his own, being only a sort of permanent guest himself.

To hide his cluelessness about what to do or say, he bustled about. He lit the gas fire, ushered Bors into a seat at the table, and fled into the kitchen to brew the tea. Some broth was left over from last night’s dinner; he heated that, too.

When he returned to the living room, he found Bors sitting there and just staring. “Is there something wrong?”

Bors shook his head. His eyes tracked from the lofty pitched roof to the expanse of windows to the dense-napped rug on the broad floorboards. “I’ve never been inside one of these. An R-11 villa, I mean. It’s . . . beautiful. Like something out of a story.”

“It is?” Valgund arranged things on the table, trying to see the place through Bors’s eyes. He’d spent his whole childhood in rooms like this. “It’s not mine,” he added hastily. “The real tenant lets me live here. My family made arrangements.”

“You’re fortunate.” Bors wasn’t being snarky this time. There was a dreamy note in his voice, as if he imagined one day living like this himself.

Valgund sat down opposite him. It was good to be reminded, he supposed, how lucky he was to live in a Councillor’s vacation home. How many former moral rehabbers could say the same?

Still, the spy’s admiration irked him in a way he couldn’t define. As Bors blew on his spoonful of broth, he asked, “Have I shaken your faith?”

“My faith in what?”

“Your faith that everybody who has nice things deserves them.”

Bors frowned at him.

Valgund knew he should stop right there, before he said something subversive, but he couldn’t seem to. “Me, for instance. Do I really merit this? Or was I just lucky to have the right connections? I guess if you’re Int/Sec, you have to believe it’s all merit, right?”

Bors’s eyes flashed. “I don’t _have_ to believe anything.” He spooned up the broth, clearly taking care not to slurp. “Corruption is a fact of life. No social system is entirely pure. There’s always some form of decadence, someone getting things they don’t deserve.”

“And that’s me—the decadence?” Valgund tried to scowl, but to his surprise, he grinned. He certainly didn’t feel like decadence personified, tired and damp as he was.

To his greater surprise, Bors grinned tentatively back. “You, but not just you,” he said, lifting the tumbler to his lips. “It’s me, too. I would never have been Raised if it wasn’t for corruption. My mother was an Admin’s favorite.”

The simple way the man admitted this touched Valgund. “Your test scores must have been stellar.”

“They weren’t terrible.” Bors wiped the corner of his mouth daintily with a napkin. “But they weren’t as good as they’d have needed to be if I hadn’t had a leg up. And my superiors find ways to remind me every day that I’m lucky to be where I am.”

“They do it because they know they’re lucky, too.” Valgund remembered his own pathetic quant scores and how ashamed they’d made his grandmother. “I mean,” he added hastily, “of course it’s not random, who gets Raised and who doesn’t. But sometimes it makes no sense to me. I have a friend, for instance—he’s a Laborer, the secretary of the Councillor whose villa this is. He started out as a kettle boy, and I guess now you’d call him the Councillor’s boyfriend, but really they’re partners in every way.”

He warmed to his subject, hoping that Bors would appreciate his appreciation of Tilrey’s merit: “This friend of mine, he can argue circles around me. He has the Council Record on the tip of his tongue. I think he might be a political genius.”

He broke off, realizing Bors was staring at him. Did he sound like he was in love with Tilrey? He worried about that sometimes. “The Councillor feels the same,” he added quickly. “They’re absolutely mad for each other.”

Bors pushed back his chair and stood up. His face was set in new, grim lines. “What’s this Councillor’s name? The one in whose house I am?”

Valgund stared at him, confused by the dangerous note in his voice. What had changed? What had he done? “Gádden. Gersha Gádden.”

Two spots of bright pink had appeared on Bors’s pale cheeks. Pointing at Valgund, he said, “There’s nothing random about this. They _instructed_ you to invite me in.”

“I—who?” Was the man unhinged? “You followed _me_ today, in case you’ve forgotten. All I’ve done is save you from frostbite or hypothermia.”

Bors kept staring at him in that dark, canny way. “He wants you to pick my brain. To find out how much of a threat I pose.”

“Why would you pose a threat to Councillor Gádden?” Valgund rose, too, and inched away from Bors. He didn’t like the tension in the spy’s body or the fanatic glitter of his eyes.

“Not the Councillor,” Bors said. “I’m talking about Tilrey Bronn.”

“You know Tilrey? I wouldn’t have thought . . .” Valgund couldn’t make head or tail of the look on the spy’s face, but he already knew Tilrey was involved in levels of plotting far too deep for him. Deep and dangerous. “I know people play political games in the Sector,” he said evenly, “but I don’t have the slightest interest in all that intrigue, and my friends know it. I had no idea you were even out there today. I most certainly wasn’t stalking you.

The spy gave himself a little shake. When he looked at Valgund again, his gaze was less alarming. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. Unless he sent you after me, that first day we met . . .”

“Tilrey?” Valgund laughed out loud. “I haven’t seen him in months, and I didn’t know you knew him till this moment. It’s not like he ever mentions your name.”

Bors shrank into himself, looking nearly as pathetic as he had when Valgund found him lost in the snow. “I’m sorry. It’s just—something that isn’t important anymore. I get paranoid sometimes.”

_No kidding._ “I suppose that’s your job, right?”

“Yeah.” The spy glanced around as if the villa had transformed itself into a frightening ruin. “I should probably go.”

“They won’t be back for ages—Tilrey and Gersha. Like I said, I’m alone out here.” Now it was Valgund who seemed pathetic to himself. He followed Bors to the coldroom and found him the spare parka.

“Thank you for helping me. Really.” Bors zipped the parka, then met Valgund’s eyes. “I don’t know many high names who’d be as kind to me as you are.”

Valgund’s cheeks warmed. _Please stop talking about names and Levels. Just stop._ “It was nice to have company,” he said bluntly.

And then, as he unsealed the front door, he tossed his pride to the winds. “You know, if you like, I could go out with you tomorrow. Show you how to find your way around the higher foothills where the trails aren’t marked. Unless whatever you’re doing is classified, of course,” he added, his cheeks burning. Maybe Bors would think he was being lured into a diabolical trap set by the Councillor to snare a political enemy.

But, to Valgund’s intense relief, Bors didn’t look shocked, only doubtful. “I suppose you could be helpful. You wouldn’t . . . tell them?” His eyes darted back toward the villa’s interior.

Valgund shook his head forcefully. “They don’t care what I do. Anyway, if I give you lessons, that’ll be easier than you tailing me through the woods. Right?”

Bors’s lips formed the tiniest of smiles. “A lot easier.”


	4. Best Served Cold

Stefan Altmering was doing shaky pushups on the floor of his cell in the Sanctioned Brothel when the imperious woman he thought of as the Chief Whore entered. Einara, her name was. A tall man followed her, folder under one arm.

Stefan had been here three days now, and no one had laid a finger on him. He didn’t mind having time to rest and gather his strength, but his door stayed locked, and the only people he saw were Einara and the Brothel servants who fed him and took him to the lavatory when she was busy. He was ready to explode with anxiety and frustration.

Somewhere out there, his family must already know where he was. Lindahl would have made sure of that. He couldn’t bear to think about his mother going to the Bureau of Labor to lodge a long series of doomed complaints, or his dad alternately weeping and yelling whenever Stefan’s little sister wasn’t in earshot.

Now he scrambled to his feet and backed up against the wall, as far from the strange man as he could get. Was this a patron?

No, of course not—the clothes were wrong. Broad shouldered and chestnut haired, the man was a lowish Drudge, with the sort of florid handsomeness that Stefan imagined aging whores had.

His cheeks burned as he stepped away from the wall and said, “I want pen and paper.”

The Chief Whore—it made Stefan feel better to call them all rude names—looked blandly back at him. Her posture made him think of Sector officials, and her composure chilled him, even when she was trying to be nice. She said, “You aren’t allowed sharp objects at the moment.”

“It’s not what you think. I . . .” Stefan swallowed hard, wishing he could ignore the man’s presence. The last men he’d interacted with at any length were the two Constables, and whenever he let his mind drift, he smelled their sweat and heard their sighs and felt their hands on him. _You belong to us now, brat._

“I want to write to Fir Councillor Lindthardt,” he said in a rush. “He gave me some indication that he might be my protector if I was, uh, more cooperative.”

Over the past three days, with plenty of time to think, he’d decided being Lindthardt’s kettle boy would be just barely preferable to being a Brothel whore. It was all very well to threaten a more drastic way out, but now that he was rested and clean and fed, he wanted to live, for his family’s sake as well as his own.

Einara sat down on his bed. “You’ll have to ask our director about that. She’ll want to meet you soon. But if I were you, I wouldn’t crawl back to the man who betrayed me to an enemy.”

_I’m not crawling. It’s self-preservation._ But Stefan couldn’t get any words out past his clenched jaw, because she was right.

Einara changed the subject without a blink. “Kai, this is Stefan,” she said. “Stefan, this is Kai Meirthal. If you watch streams, you’ve seen his work.”

Stefan gave the man a glare, clenching a fist behind his back to control his trembling. “Not a fan of streams. That’s more my little sister’s thing.”

Kai’s brows shot up. “Got an attitude, do we?”

“He’s a proud one,” Einara said.

Stefan could guess why she’d brought a stream maker here. He glared at her, too. “I’m not taking off my clothes for a stream. Hard pass.”

“No one ever suggested you should—” Einara began.

Kai interrupted her with a rueful headshake. “So this is what Lindahl’s taking to bed these days.”

Stefan’s spine turned to a coil of steel. “Fuck off.”

“I was only pointing out—”

“Kai.” Einara spoke quietly, but Kai broke off and lowered his head. There was something intimate about the way they looked at each other, as if they were fucking, and it was clear who was in charge of the relationship.

Einara turned her stern gaze on Stefan next. “You’re not doing yourself any favors by being difficult. You two have more in common than you know.”

“Yeah, we have a sanctimonious asshole in common.” Kai turned to Stefan again, a scowl on his generous lips. “I was Lindahl’s favorite for years.”

Stefan couldn’t imagine enduring a long-term relationship with Councillor Lindahl on any sort of voluntary basis. “We’ve got nothing in common,” he snapped.

“My, we’re salty.” Kai stepped forward.

Stefan retreated, pressing his back against the wall. He bit his lip, hating his new reflexes.

“Sudden moves aren’t good,” Einara said.

“Sorry.” Kai halted and offered his hand to Stefan, palm-down. “Look. I hate the guy, you hate the guy. Let’s call a truce, okay?

Kai seemed like a dick, but Stefan couldn’t afford to turn down potential allies. He accepted the hand, willing his own not to tremor.

Kai looked him up and down. “High Laborer family, am I right? R-5, R-6? Good test scores? Ambitious parents? That’s Lindahl’s type.”

“My parents had nothing to do with it.” Stefan couldn’t stop his voice from thickening. If his folks ever found out about his bargain with Lindahl, they might never forgive him. They’d always wanted the best for him, but not at the cost of his self-respect.

“He could pass for Strutter-born,” Einara said, “don’t you think?”

“Sure.” Kai’s eyes swept over Stefan’s body again, making Stefan want to put on more layers. It wasn’t a hungry gaze, though, only a curious one. “He’s the type our target viewers swoon for. I think he could play a young me, though he’s smaller.”

“Not that small,” Einara said. “You’re just absurdly big.”

“So I am.”

Stefan wanted to hit Kai. But this could be the last chance to salvage something from his fucked-up life, so he kept his hands tight by his sides. “What do you mean, I could play you?”

“He’s referring to a new stream,” Einara said in her weirdly formal way. “It’s about a boy from a nice Upstart family who fritters away his school days and ends up with a Laborer Notification.”

“ _You’re_ an Upstart?” Stefan asked Kai, not hiding his shock. He knew Strutter kids occasionally got blue-tagged, but it hadn’t happened to anyone he’d ever known. And to end up here, a whore . . . he couldn’t imagine the level of shame Kai’s family must have experienced.

Kai widened his hazel-green eyes, mocking Stefan’s reaction. “My parents are Strutters, yeah.”

“I thought . . . well, I thought Strutters took Soldrid when that happened.” That was the usual outcome in sobstreams, anyway, and Stefan had watched more of them than he cared to admit.

“Excuse me if I didn’t off myself to satisfy your stupid concept of honor.” Kai turned to Einara. “He’s kind of an uptight little shit, isn’t he? I’m not sure he can be me. I was cool at school. Everybody liked me. I was _fun_.”

“But you had the same upbringing,” Einara said. “Only you chose to toss the uptightness aside and sink into the mire, while Stefan embraced it.”

Stefan’s face was hot and tight again. They were amusing themselves at his expense, while his life was ending. “Plenty of people liked me at school. Anyway, I’d rather be uptight,” he said, painfully aware of how uptight he sounded right this second, “than belong in the mire of _this_ foul place.”

Kai and Einara exchanged a glance. “He can definitely play Strutter-born,” Kai said.

They were toying with him, these two whores. Stefan wanted to claw out their eyes and escape into the corridor, but where would he go? “ _I_ was fun,” he said loudly. “At school, the Strutter-borns always wanted me at their parties. They fought over me.”

Kai snorted. “I bet they did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Unfazed by Stefan’s rage, Kai opened the folder he carried and produced a sheaf of papers. “Okay, kid. I’ve got the perfect scene for you to read. This is where Darius tries to convince his friends to stay out late and party with him even though the E-Squareds start the next day.” He handed the pages to Stefan. “Think you can handle that, fun guy?”

“Kai,” Einara said. “The boy’s been through a lot.”

Stefan forced himself to breathe. Whatever they were proposing probably wasn’t worse than crawling back to Lindthardt. He took the papers in one shaky hand. “Why am I reading this?”

“It’s an audition.”

“Kai. Sit.” Einara patted the bed beside her. She asked Stefan, “Would you like me to send a message to your parents?”

Stefan’s free fist clenched. “I want to explain to them. Myself. I don’t want them getting a message from some Brothel keeper.”

“With the director’s help, we might be able to arrange a voice call—if you cooperate.” She cocked her head. “I’m giving you a chance to be useful here without obliging any patrons—yet, anyway—though that’s something I would be well within my rights to compel you to do.”

_Compel you._ Stefan knew what that boiled down to. Once you were sapped senseless or tied down, your principles weren’t worth a grain of rice.

He glanced at the pages he’d been given. “Is this porn?”

Kai laughed. “It’s a sobstream for fourteen-plus. Girls like your little sister will eat it up.”

“Oh.” Stefan tried to process this information. The heroes of sobstreams were always handsome and idol-worthy—people you looked up to, not people you despised.

Lindahl and Lindthardt had treated him like a speck of dirt they could flick away. Their deals with him and their promises to him meant nothing because he was nothing. He wished he could hurt them in an intimate way that would make them gasp with pain. He wished he could corrupt and ruin their children the way he’d been ruined.

Failing that, though, he could show them what he thought of all Upstarts by playing this fictional character like a colossal dickhead. That would probably be accurate to Kai’s past, too.

_I should have been one of them. I was more than good enough._ But it was too late.

“Thank you so much for giving me this chance,” he said, keeping the sarcasm low-key. “How generous.”

From the bed where he’d settled beside Einara, Kai laughed again. “That’s the spirit, but don’t bother to thank anyone till you get the part. Now, let’s see you play the scene like an entitled brat who thinks the sun rises and sets for him. You read Darius. I’ll read Markus and Bronia.”

***

“What do you think?” Einara asked as they walked back down the corridor, leaving Stefan locked up behind them.

To her, the boy’s performance had seemed a little stiff. But all the acting on Oslov streams was stylized compared with the Harbourer theater she’d known as a child, where actors competed for the biggest and loudest displays of emotion. She left the judgment on these matters to Kai, who had very definite criteria for acting, lighting, and image composition. His streams always drew huge audiences, so he must be doing something right.

“The kid has a mouth on him,” Kai said. “If you want me to work with him, give him a lecture on respecting his elders.”

They were headed for the kitchen, where it was time for Einara to prepare Hulda’s nightly meal of low-sodium broth, rice pudding, and tea. “That can be arranged,” she said, hiding her amusement.

“And I wouldn’t assume Lindahl is out of the picture. What if he comes here and demands a night with the boy?”

“We’ll hand him over if we have to. Sooner or later, Stefan’s going to need to earn his keep.” She noted Kai’s quizzical look. “I didn’t make the boy any promises. All I said was that I’d _try_ to help him.”

Kai tsked. “You’re a cold one, ’Nara.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“He’s not bad. I mean, he’ll need coaching, but he’s got the arrogance down, and he’s a fresh face. People are so bored in this city, they’d kill for something new.” He shook his head. “Our viewers are a lot like Councillors with our Jewels—hungry for fresh meat.”

“So you’ll give him a chance.” The flush of relief in Einara’s chest surprised her.

“If you make him behave.” Kai paused before the swinging doors of the kitchen and gave her a long look. “What’s with you and this kid? You’re usually a hard-ass.”

“I thought you just called me cold.” But Einara knew what he meant; she hadn’t balked at doing her job before. “He’s been through a lot, that’s all. The Constables dumped him here like a bag of trash.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty fucked up, even for Lindahl. Maybe he’s getting more twisted in his old age. Still, you—”

He stopped as Nyv Felker, one of the youngest Mouths, rocketed down the hallway toward them, his broad, freckled face distorted by alarm.

“Fir’n Einara!” The boy skidded to a stop on the tiles. “You gotta come. Fir’n Director’s having bad chest pain, and she won’t let them take her to the infirmary. She says she has to see you, right now.”

Einara exchanged a glance with Kai. Was this it, at last? “We need an ambulance. She should go to the hospital.”

“Gastetter sent for one, Fir’n.” Felker danced along beside her, excited by his important errand, as she headed back up the corridor. “But the director wants to see you _now_. She sent me personally!”

“I’ll hurry.” Einara cocked her head at Kai, who’d been trailing along, to tell him not to follow. She didn’t know whether the fluttering in her chest was exhilaration or dread.

She found Hulda flat on her back. The med-aide and Gastetter, the on-site medic, were perched grimly over her. The old woman looked shockingly small on the white bedspread with her closed eyes and her grayish, wasted skin, as if she were already being prepared for the funeral pyre.

A piercing shiver ran through Einara. When Hulda opened her eyes, her own heart jolted, and she didn’t have to fake her apprehension. “What’s going on? Why won’t you let them move you?”

“I will. Soon.” Hulda’s voice was smaller, too—scratchy, as if her throat were parched. Yet she managed to raise herself on one elbow and wave imperiously at the medical personnel. “Out! We need a moment alone.”

The aide protested, but Gastetter was used to Hulda’s whims. “Come on,” she said, taking the aide by the arm. “It’s the only way we’ll get her in the ambulance. Anyway, she seems stable.”

“For now,” the aide said, but he followed her out, leaving Hulda and Einara alone.

“Child.” Einara flinched at the sound of that dry, alien voice. But when Hulda said, “Come sit by me,” she obeyed.

She took the director’s withered hand and massaged it, looking into her eyes. “Talk to me.”

A coughing fit seized Hulda, her hand holding Einara’s in a death grip. When it passed, she said, “This feels bad, my love. I could have years more to live, or I could have a day, or an hour, or minutes. Whatever happens, there are things you should know.”

A warm wave of anticipation washed over Einara. She knew she should protest that Hulda wasn’t at death’s door, but she only said, “Tell me, love.” It had to be something about the True Hearth.

“I want you to know who launched that missile. Who killed your mother and sister.”

Tears blinded Einara before she was conscious of feeling anything. In her wildest dreams, she hadn’t expected this. “You _know_ that? But you always said—”

“That I had no way of knowing.” Hulda coughed again. “And I didn’t. But our True Hearth friends, the ones in Harbour—they’re better informed. The Council kept it very quiet, because it wasn’t supposed to happen. The launch system was hacked. It was one of their own.”

“ _One_ Councillor launched the missile?” Einara was the one digging her nails into Hulda’s hand now. “All this time you knew and didn’t tell me? Tell me _now_.”

The director shook her head, her own eyes glazed with tears. “I had a reason for not telling you, my darling. The Councillor who did the deed is long gone.”

“Gone?” Einara resisted an urge to pick up the woman and shake her. “I missed my chance? I’ve been your loyal servant. I’ve done whatever you wanted.”

“I did what I could to keep you useful and productive. I didn’t tell you because knowing wouldn’t help. But now you deserve the truth.” Hulda drew a sharp breath. “Do you remember the General Magistrate who was exiled? Bror Malkien Linnett?”

The name rang only the faintest of bells. “Is it him? Is that why they exiled him?”

“Linnett took unilateral action against this place you call Michigan, the enemy of your Colonel Thibault.”

“Why?” She could barely breathe.

Hulda shrugged. “He hoped to provoke a war among the Harbourer states, I suppose. When the Council exiled him, he fled to Harbour, already an old man. He died there fifteen or sixteen years ago, according to our informants. A year or so after you killed my nephew and we made our little arrangement.”

Fifteen years ago? A gale roared in Einara’s ears. She was dimly conscious of dropping Hulda’s limp hand and leaping to her feet.

She had sacrificed everything to come to Oslov when her sister’s killer was in Harbour all along. He had died while she was still new to the Brothel. All her work here, gathering extensive dossiers on Councillors, was for nothing.

She shook her head, her hands itching to wrap themselves around the old woman’s neck. “You are a _demon_.”

Hulda spoke almost meekly. “I was saving you from yourself. If you’d known the truth, you would have turned your vengeance into a suicide mission and tried to take all of Oslov down with you.”

“ _I can still do that_.” The words hissed from deep in Einara’s throat. A spirit had possessed her and was speaking through her—the girl she’d been, determined to avenge her sister. Years sitting in the torpor of the Brothel had made her soft and sentimental. Knowing that, Hulda must have counted on her losing her resolve. But that girl was still alive inside, and she was itching to shed Oslov blood.

“You think I can’t still have my revenge?” she said. “I’ll find this Linnett’s descendants and slaughter them all down to the last generation. And then I’ll burn Oslov to cinders.”

Tears crisscrossed Hulda’s cheeks, a strange sight there. “My love, you have a future now: a job to do when I’m gone, a staff that needs your guidance, a man who loves you. Don’t throw it all away for a mad revenge mission. Those verses you think will unravel our networks? I wouldn’t rely on them.”

Einara turned to the wall. If she had to see Hulda’s face one more instant, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from choking out whatever feeble life was still in the woman with her bare hands.

All these years she’d silenced her old self, locking her up and bribing her with empty promises the same way she was bribing Stefan now. She’d surrendered to Oslov and her own weak will to live, betraying herself far more cruelly than Hulda had ever betrayed her.

“I curse you,” she said in Harbourer, and turned toward the door just as it burst open to reveal Gastetter and two blue-clad emergency techs wheeling a stretcher.

Einara stood at the far end of the room, arms crossed, as they lifted Hulda and checked her vital signs and buckled her into place. When they wheeled the director out, she didn’t offer to go along. She stayed where she was, staring at the white wall without a single thought in her head but _burn it down_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the next chapter, we're going to jump forward in time a few months and see how Ceill's doing. I hope everyone's hanging in there, and thank you for reading! <3


	5. Archetype

_Four months later_

_Shut up_ , Ceill Linnett wanted to yell at the two boys who were gossiping in the hall outside the common room, their voices echoing off the concrete ceiling. _Shut up, shut up, shut up_.

But everybody in his dorm-pod already shunned him, and that wouldn’t exactly help. So he turned his back to the hallway and tried to focus on the cylinder, where episode 2 of _Their Ways Parted_ was streaming for the third time in the past ten-day.

This was also Ceill’s third time seeing it. For the first viewing, the whole pod had been crowded into the common room together. Some kids shouted in surprise during the last scene. Others wept silently. Ceill had stayed on the outskirts, doing his best not to call attention to himself.

To watch the show again—properly, without all the noise—he had to sneak in at odd hours, which meant missing his beloved physical recreation. It was worth it.

Darius Axenfelt, the main character of _Their Ways Parted_ , was the most beautiful boy Ceill had ever seen. He was the same age as Ceill and his schoolmates, but he seemed like a different species, with cruel, shapely lips and slim hips and broad shoulders and eyes you could drown in, the lashes like long slashes of charcoal. Darius walked with a slight swagger, rolling his shoulders. Everyone in his dorm-pod feared or adored him.

Darius’s family were all Upstarts, bearers of a proud name. But at the end of episode 1, Darius had finished his E-Squared exams on two hours of sleep, ill prepared and hungover, and now he wasn’t swaggering anymore. Now he was going to pay the price.

“I’m sure you didn’t do that badly, Darius.” That was Bronia, Darius’s beautiful blond schoolmate from a Laborer family. Darius had carelessly taken her virginity and cheated off her assignments, and there probably was nothing she wouldn’t give him if he asked.

Ceill understood. On the cusp of eighteen, he was familiar with sexual urges and the mechanical ways of satisfying them, and he’d had secret crushes on his schoolmates. But he’d never felt about anyone the way he did about this fictional character.

Sometimes, half asleep, he could swear he felt Darius’s soft breath against his temple and a sly whisper in his ear. New senses were coming alive inside him that he hadn’t known existed. He punished his body, swimming or running laps in an effort to tire it into numbness, to no avail.

He wanted to tell someone about this feeling, but who? He couldn’t possibly confess to his parents or even Grandma Lisha, and his old friends in Thurskein had drifted away.

When he had a secret his family wouldn’t understand, Ceill usually saved it up to tell Aleks Snowblind, whom he saw on the sly when he visited his grandmother in Thurskein. Aleks was a good listener, and he knew how to put Ceill’s confused feelings into words. But Aleks also believed that streams were government propaganda designed to “entertain the workers into submission.” He wouldn’t understand this at all.

On the screen, Darius rolled his lethal eyes at Bronia. He must know he was doomed on some level, yet he pretended he didn’t give a damn. “Believe me, I bombed those tests. I could barely keep my eyes open.”

“You’re still an Axenfelt.” That was Markus, another Laborer-born schoolmate; he was shy and clever and, like Bronia, madly in love with Darius. “They couldn’t possibly blue-tag you,” he insisted, lowering his voice on “blue-tag” just as Ceill would have done.

Every student in terminal year lived in terror of that phrase. At the end of February, you took the E-Squareds. In mid-April, they Notified you. It came in the form of a blue or a red tag on the nameboard outside your dorm room: blue for Laborer, red for Upstart. Some said the tag appeared in the middle of the night; others, in the very early morning. No one dared stay up to find out. Ceill suspected everyone in his class had nightmares about that morning, even the brilliant or high-named ones who considered their futures secure.

The test that would decide his own future was less than three months away. Like Darius, he wasn’t a high-ranked student, although in Ceill’s case, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Watching the episode tied his stomach in knots when it wasn’t making him weak with desire.

Darius tousled Markus’s hair and slipped his arm around Bronia’s slim waist. In a few seconds, he would coax his two Laborer-born friends into a wild threesome they would both regret. But who could resist him?

“Oh, they certainly could blue-tag me,” Darius drawled. “And they probably should. But have you heard of a little thing called connections?”

“Sound familiar, Linnett?”

Ceill whipped around and found Ludo Akeina, sprawled on an armchair with his feet on a tea table and an indolent grin on his face. When had he come in?

He turned back to the screen as if Ludo were an insect he couldn’t be bothered to crush. It was best not to engage with him.

Ludo’s parents were Councillors, which made them theoretically peers, but Ludo seemed determined to demonstrate to the world, or at least to Ceill, that they were no such thing. In year thirteen, he’d shown Ceill the old picture of Tilrey that ended up ripping Ceill’s comfortable little world apart. Ceill never let on, of course. He also kept a stoic face while, for a full month in year fourteen, Ludo whispered “whorespawn” at him whenever he found the chance.

Together they watched in silence as Darius stripped off Markus’s shirt. Heat spread over Ceill’s face as Bronia nuzzled Darius’s neck from behind. _Why can’t he leave?_

“I’d do him,” Ludo said in a drawl like Darius’s. “I’d do her, too. Not the nerd boy, though. What about you?”

“That’s my business,” Ceill snapped. He found some reassurance in the fact that, though Ludo had a gang of friends, he always saved the needling for when he and Ceill were alone. He seemed relucant to make a public spectacle of a Linnett, even an outcast one.

“You could have your pick,” Ludo said. “You’re as hot as any of them.”

Ceill dug his nails into his palm. Ludo only flirted when they were alone, too, and the way he did it made Ceill’s stomach roil. Every word was honeyed and insinuating, as if Ludo knew something about Ceill that no one else did, possibly not even Ceill himself. As if he could see something low and whorish in him.

An old picture of Tilrey didn’t prove anything. But it was exhausting, thinking about people wondering and guessing. He hated it.

As Markus arched in ecstasy under Darius’s touch, Ludo said, “I heard that after they Lower Darius, he’s going to become a whore in the Sanctioned.”

_Whorespawn._ Ceill kept his voice neutral. “I heard that, too.”

“Pretty sad, right? A fine family like his, and he goes and dishonors it.” Ludo cleared his throat. “Not that it hasn’t ever happened in real life.”

Ceill didn’t touch that.

“The actor who plays Darius, for instance. Did you know he used to go to our school?”

“The actor?” Ceill had barely thought about the fact that the people on-screen were also people in real life. A Councillor’s son could never associate with actors, especially if he was a marginal student who needed to impress the Notification Board. “He’s from an Upstart family?”

“No, just a decent Drudge line. Pernilla told me she saw him at the café in the Outer Ring where they all hang out between shoots. She recognized him from when he was friends with her sister.” Oblivious to Ceill’s sudden attentiveness, Ludo continued: “Of course, he’s in the Sanctioned now. Whores are bad news—I know. My uncle fell in love with one.”

Ceill barely heard. He was deep in a dream of finding Darius drinking hot, salty buttered tea in a café in the Outer Ring. Walking up to him. Sending him a silent, unmistakable message with his eyes.

But he did turn around when Ludo said, “She told all my uncle’s secrets to shirkers, and he was exiled.”

“Your uncle? Exiled, for real?” Maybe Ludo was inventing a family scandal to trick Ceill into revealing his own.

“Ask your dad.” Ludo lofted his black brows, clearly satisfied to get a reaction. “He’d remember. My family doesn’t talk about it, obviously, but I found out. And that’s why I’ll never trust a whore.”

_Whorespawn._ It all came around to that, didn’t it? Angry at himself for giving Ludo the small satisfaction of his attention, Ceill returned it to the screen.

Darius and Markus were having a postcoital argument, which Bronia tried helplessly to mediate. Markus gathered his clothes and stormed out, yelling at Darius, “I don’t need to spend the night before my Notification with you and your lies!”

Darius shouted back, “Go back to your sad single bed, then!”

Ceill knew what was coming next. The camera would pan away from Darius and Bronia as she twined her body around his, trying to console him for Markus’s angry exit. The image would dissolve to a shot of the dorm hallway, then zoom slowly in on the board outside Darius’s door. The tag hanging there was blue.

Black screen and credits.

Darius’s whole life was about to be destroyed because every year the Notification Board made examples of a few Upstart kids who preferred partying to studying. Who weren’t quite dedicated or diligent enough. Ceill knew his family wouldn’t let that happen to him, but what if it _should_ happen?

What if he deserved a blue tag?

What if he wanted one?

When the image smash-cut to black, he leapt to his feet and walked out right past Ludo to show he wasn’t afraid.

For an instant, they locked eyes, but to Ceill’s surprise, Ludo looked away first. “That won’t be you,” he said. “Not with your connections.”

Ceill heard the unspoken part: _Connections you don’t deserve._

When Tilrey was angry at someone, he never shouted; he spoke in a tone that was feather-light and dangerously casual. It was one of the things about him that Ceill admired most. Now he did his best imitation: “That won’t be you, either. Even if your uncle _was_ a traitor and an exile.”

Ludo’s eyes settled on him again. “My uncle was human. He made a mistake.”

“So did Darius. Just a harmless little mistake.”

“Whorespawn,” Ludo hissed softly, almost fondly.

Ceill kept walking.

***

“It’s still a no,” Stefan said. “I’ll pose for you, but the clothes aren’t coming off.”

Kai crossed his arms and glared down at Stefan in the windowseat. The youth was talented, but consistently maddening. You had to coax everything out of him.

They were in one of the Brothel’s grandest suites, an exact replica of a Councillor’s bedchamber. Kai had chosen this one for the window that offered a view of the city, and he needed to work fast before the brief winter dawn slid into dusk.

Outside, a few lonely snowflakes caught the light—perfect. All he needed was for Stefan to slip out of his clothes and into a robe that would leave little to the imagination.

“I don’t think you understand your position,” he said, holding out the flimsy robe again. “Everybody in Redda knows what you look like now. Everyone’s seen you half-undressed in the threesome scene. That means at least half the Upstarts in Redda are desperate to fuck you, including most of the Council.”

Pointedly ignoring the robe, Stefan turned a page in his script for episode 6. “So you want dirty pictures of me as a sales tool. I get it. But it’s different to undress as part of the story, and you know that as well as I do.”

Kai tossed the robe away and picked up the camera. He sighted outdoors, checking the light again. “Hulda’s had four bids for you in the past ten-day. Powerful men offering her sap, secrets, everything she craves most. You can’t hold out on her forever.”

As Stefan turned another page, Kai caught a telltale tremor. For all his bravado, all his threats to take Soldrid, the boy was scared. They’d given him a new life as the idol of stream fans everywhere, with no Strutters to boss him around, and now he wasn’t so keen on dying for honor.

Yesterday, as they left Café Duskfall, a handful of slumming kellthavina teens had followed Stefan, pleading, “Darius, Darius, touch me! Sign your name on my arm!” Apparently that was the latest fad. Stefan had signed four forearms and done some flirting before Kai managed to get him turned around and secured inside the waiting Brothel van.

“I wouldn’t let the success go to your head,” Kai said, reaching for the photo album that he’d set on the armchair with his equipment cases. “You wouldn’t be the first little stream star who thinks the world revolves around him.”

“I don’t think that.” Stefan didn’t look up. “But it would be hard to replace me before the series is wrapped.”

_And very easy afterward._ “Look.” Kai softened his voice. “What happened to you was unspeakable, but working here won’t be like that. You’re the crown Jewel now, and the Brothel’s rules will protect you. You can sell yourself on your own terms.”

“You mean Hulda’s terms?” The boy dogeared his place in the script and looked up at Kai with a flash of dark eyes. “You both keep telling me she’s gonna croak any minute, but here she is, still breathing and giving orders. And I’d rather not be her Jewel, crown or otherwise.”

They were at a stalemate, as Kai had feared. He opened the album and slid it onto Stefan’s lap. “Look. You said it was okay to be undressed as part of the story, right? What if this photoshoot is another story, just like the stream? What if it’s art?”

Kai’s mentor, Karina, used that word all the time. “ _You’re_ art,” she’d said once, indicating his tattooed body. But it still felt awkward in Kai’s mouth. He’d never produce anything timeless or transcendent. He was just an old whore who knew his way around a camera and a compelling plotline.

At first, Stefan looked like he might push the album away. Then he went still, gazing at the photos. “Did you take these?”

“My mentor shot them some twenty years ago, may her last moment be bright. She was a master. An artist,” Kai added, feeling more comfortable applying the word to someone else.

The boy turned a page, his eyes drinking in the glossy images that Kai knew by heart.

They all depicted a young man close to Stefan’s age, slender and sinewy and fair-haired and rosy-cheeked and generally delectable. He was posing in a room much like this one—first in front of the window, wearing a robe; then on the bed, nude. In the window pictures, he was sad and thoughtful, his blue eyes full of soulful emotions. In the bed pictures, he became flushed and eager, as if displaying himself for a lover who waited coyly just out of sight.

The first time Kai saw the pictures, he’d gotten a raging hard-on. Now he thought he detected a blush on Stefan’s cheeks. So maybe the boy wasn’t impervious to attraction, though he’d never shown an interest in anyone at the Brothel.

When the sequence of pictures ended, Stefan snapped the album closed. “Everyone’s seen those. When I was at school, my friend downloaded a couple and showed them around.”

“They’re classic wank material, yeah, as well as being exemplars of the craft. That’s why I think you’d be perfect to recreate them for a new generation.”

“Recreate them?” Stefan frowned, but Kai could tell he was intrigued. The boy was vain of his looks, though he tried hard to hide it. And he liked a challenge.

“That’s right.” Kai indicated the fading light out the window. “But if we don’t get started soon, we won’t have the light.”

“Can’t you add it in post?” Stefan stood up, snagged the robe from the armchair, and held it up to his own body.

“No, this needs to be real. Classier that way.”

“You really want me to be him? Sad Window Boy? My coloring’s totally different.”

“I’m not trying to copy Karina’s photos. I’m trying to _build_ on them.” Kai struggled to remember how his mentor had described such things. She used so many big words. “We’re trying to place you in a . . . dialogue with the pictures that people already know and love and wank to. We’re trying to pique people’s attention.”

“That should pique something, all right.” Stefan tossed the robe away again. “No thanks. I’m not posing that way for you. I’ll end up looking stupid.”

“You don’t trust me? After everything we’ve been through?” Kai took a deep breath, then unzipped his fleece and dropped it on the floor. “How about this? You pose naked, and I’ll shoot naked. That way no one has the advantage.”

It was a calculated risk. Over their months of working together, Kai had found the best way to gain Stefan’s trust was to make himself vulnerable. When the boy felt like he had the upper hand, his natural showmanship tended to come out.

Stefan stared at Kai. “You aren’t seriously . . .?”

“I am.” Kai stripped off his shirt and undershirt. He’d lost any vestige of modesty long ago.

“What would Einara think? You two—” Stefan broke off with a hissing gasp as the tattoos on Kai’s chest were revealed.

“She wouldn’t give a fuck. I’m not coming on to you, I’m just making us equal.” Kai pulled down his trousers. “Don’t act surprised. I’m guessing the others told you I used to be called the Painted Boy.”

“Yeah.” Stefan’s voice was hushed.

“I’m not ashamed.” Kai straightened, fully naked now, rolled his shoulders, and looked straight into the boy’s eyes. “I’m a piece of art, they used to say. All commissioned by Councillors, so maybe not the most refined canvas, but still.” He pointed to the sunflower that circled one nipple. “That’s Lindahl’s.”

Stefan kept staring—not frightened or disgusted, as far as Kai could tell, but fascinated. “You let them do that to you?”

“When you desperately need your next dip of sap, you’ll let anybody do most anything.” Kai bent and picked up the camera again. The room was overheated, like all Brothel rooms; he was perfectly comfortable this way. “I’ve done my part now. How about you?”

“I never said I’d do anything.” But Stefan did seem more at ease, as if he’d gone from being a cornered animal to having a front-row seat at the hunt. He peered closer at Kai’s chest, his finger stopping an inch from the small, angry-red _E_ above the collarbone. “Is that . . . a _brand_?”

Kai unspooled a lazy grin; he’d expected this question. “Yeah, but that one’s different. I wanted it.”

“Really?” Stefan looked queasy.

“Sort of. That’s a story I might tell you sometime if you’re good, but right now we have other business.” Moment of truth time. Kai pointed commandingly at the robe, then at the window. “Your turn.”

Stefan stood frozen for a long enough moment that Kai worried he’d stripped for nothing. But then the boy gave a little start, as if waking, and slipped his own fleece off his shoulders.

“Fine,” he said. “But don’t blame me if I’m laughing too hard at the sight of your goose pimples to give you any good shots.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Who is he, anyway?” Stefan toed off his slippers. “Sad Window Boy? If those photos have been floating around for twenty years, what happened to him?”

“He was just some Councillor’s kettle boy.” Kai adjusted the camera’s light meter, his anticipation building. Ever since Karina had shown him the photos, using them as a lesson in making the most of scanty light and a reluctant subject, he’d been itching to prove to himself that he could do something just as good.

But he’d never found a boy with the right blend of beauty, orneriness, and emotional transparency, until this one. If he had to sacrifice a little professional dignity—well, he’d never had much of that anyway.

“Who Sad Window Boy was as a person isn’t important,” he said, trying to sound important and sure of himself. “Think of him as a mood, a . . .” What was that long word? “An archetype. A fantasy for the ages.”

Stefan laughed as, finally nude, he put on the robe. “Like the hero of a saga.”

“Yeah. Think of him as a character you’re playing. Like Darius.” Kai took two steps back and peered through the lens.

_Yes._ The boy already seemed relaxed. If he could just get Stefan to let down his guard a little more, to forget that these photos were indeed a sales tool as _well_ as art, then this would work beautifully.

“Face the window. A little closer—yeah, and now open the robe. Turn away from me slightly. Withhold yourself.” Kai took a step in and tried another angle. “Yesss.”

“You’re gonna make me laugh.”

“No, no laughing! Think of your precious family, or of some sweetheart you left behind—if you have one.” Kai wiped the grin off his face. This couldn’t be a game. “Be Darius. You’ve shamed your family. You’re all alone, in a Councillor’s bedchamber, waiting for him to come back. Show yourself only to the brutal outdoors. Yes. Exactly like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ceill's history with Ludo and the photos is covered in "Spitting Image." The photos themselves are introduced at the beginning of "The Painted Boy." Tilrey knew they would have a long cultural life, and he was sadly right.


	6. A Truthful Life

“This is completely inaccurate!” Ceill wailed.

His mother stuck her head in from the kitchen, where she was trying to replicate Grandma Lisha’s root-vegetable fritters for a free-night treat. “If that silly stream upsets you so much, just stop watching it.”

“Shh! I can’t hear!” Ceill was curled up in one corner of the couch, his eyes glued to the cylinder on the wall. This was his first time seeing episode 3, and though it annoyed him so far—not enough Darius!—his mother couldn’t be allowed to ruin it.

Notification Day had set golden boy Darius and his two humbler friends on radically different paths. While Darius was Lowered and given a data-entry posting in the Sector, shy, clever Markus was Raised and trained to defend the Republic by surveilling subversives. (His job was portrayed in both vague and glorious terms, which Ceill knew from his dad was because the government censors didn’t want you to know anything concrete about Int/Sec.) Meanwhile, Bronia, who remained a Laborer and a terrible goody-goody, volunteered to relocate to Thurskein and teach young people there, hoping to improve their lives.

That was where the inaccuracies got unbearable, and Ceill couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

“Schoolrooms in ’Skein don’t look anything like that!” he said. “They don’t have giant windows like ours!”

His mother ducked in again, spatula in hand. “They probably shot those scenes in a warehouse in the Outer Ring. You need all kinds of permits and chaperones to shoot a stream in Thurskein.”

“It’s not just that.” Ceill pointed at the screen, where Bronia was patiently explaining the principles of meritocracy to a benighted Skeinsha teen who had just disparaged “book learning.” “They’re making us look stupid _._ They’re making _Skeinshaka_ look stupid,” he corrected himself swiftly, “like all they ever do is work factory lines and drink beer on free-nights. They’re making it look like it takes some sappy girl from Redda to teach them to use their heads, and that’s not _true_. Grandma Lisha is smarter than anyone on this show.”

“You’re upsetting yourself for no reason.” His mother set a platter of golden fritters on the table. “I used to love streams when I was your age,” she continued, adding the tangy white dipping sauce, “but then I realized they’re all just propaganda dressed up in a pretty package.”

It was so frustrating when adults had no imagination. He was tempted to tell her that Aleks Snowblind said the exact same thing.

The episode had reached its ten-minute break, so Ceill muted the droning public-service announcements and knelt beside his mother at the table. “Thank you,” he reminded himself to say before stuffing two fritters in his mouth. “These are almost as good as Grandma’s.”

His mom shook her head, but she was smiling as she tucked into her own serving. “Next time, you try making them. You’ve watched your grandmother enough times.”

“Okay.” But all Ceill could think about were the ghostly images on the screen. “Have you heard of a café in the Outer Ring, Mom? Where streammakers hang out?”

“Why?”

“I’m just curious.” He tried to play innocent the way Tilrey was always so good at. “Somebody at school was talking about it.”

“I remember something like that from my misspent youth, yes. My friends and I explored the Outer Ring and got up to all kinds of foolishness.” She was looking dangerously hard at him now. “But I waited to do that till I was safely at University.”

“I didn’t say I was going there.” Ceill stabbed his fork into a fritter. “Though there are kids at my school who are in the Outer Ring every free-night. Drinking and stuff. So they say.”

The furrow between his mother’s brows deepened. “Well, they shouldn’t be. I don’t want you wasting your time chasing trouble, Ceillsha. Your tests are in less than three months, and your Notification in four.”

The words “tests” and “Notification” made Ceill’s world blink from color into grayscale. The crispy vegetables went leaden in his mouth. “I’m _studying_ ,” he said.

“I know you are. You’re very diligent. And you need to keep at it.”

_I’m not stupid. I’m not._ Ceill dipped another fritter and jammed it in his mouth, but a weight had descended on his chest. He thought of Ludo hissing _whorespawn_ at him in the empty common room.

“People are still gonna _know_ ,” he muttered.

He was supposed to want to be Raised more than anything in the world. He’d spent the past seventeen years preparing for it. But what if being an Upstart only meant dealing with people like Ludo every day? What if it was exactly like being at school, or even worse?

“What’s that, sweetheart?”

Ceill considered pretending he’d asked her to pass the platter. But he couldn’t stay quiet about this forever, couldn’t let her act like the problem wasn’t real.

“People will still know,” he said. “People will guess who my actual father is. Who I am. And they’ll tell other people.”

His mother flinched like he’d struck her. Then she softened, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “Don’t worry about that. Not yet. Let your dad and Tilrey and me—”

“I can’t let you worry about it when it’s _my_ problem!” Somehow Ceill was on his feet, and he was yelling. He hadn’t decided to do either of those things. “It’s _my_ life that people are going to make absolute hell!”

“Ceillsha.” His mother’s face was white. “Sit down. You’re scaring me.”

Ceill sat down. Her words had left him limp and dizzy, but he could not let this go. “Couldn’t we just stop pretending?” he asked his plate. “After I’m Notified? Couldn’t we just tell people the truth and end all the rumors once and for all?”

“What rumors are you even talking about? Who’s spreading rumors?”

_Everyone._ Ceill looked more and more like Tilrey every day; even he couldn’t ignore it. Two of his old friends in Thurskein had already asked him about the resemblance, carefully and politely, and he’d had to play dumb.

Here in Redda, Ludo had noticed years ago and probably told all his friends. And old Councillor Saldegren, Dad’s ally in the Council, gave Ceill the strangest looks every time he came to dinner, as if he wanted to ask a question but didn’t dare. Didn’t his parents _mind_?

If Ceill ended up with a Sector job, he would have to interact daily with more old people who also knew Tilrey. People who would draw the obvious conclusion.

“Look,” he said, “I know we can’t be official about it. We can’t change my records.” They’d had that argument when he was fifteen, and it ended abruptly when Ceill learned that falsifying a genetic profile was a crime for which his mother could be sent to detention. “But couldn’t we just . . . stop lying?”

His mother’s expression hardened. “Yours isn’t the only case like this, Ceill. When he was at school, your Uncle Valgund was best friends with Councillor Lindahl’s nephew. Everyone could see the boy looked more like his mother’s Laborer secretary than like his legal father, but the family didn’t acknowledge it, ever. Certain things can only be accepted—”

“—if nobody talks about them.” Verdant hells, Ceill hated everybody sometimes. “That’s stupid,” he said. “It’s true whether or not you acknowledge it. All I want . . .”

He didn’t finish, because even he wasn’t sure what he wanted. To throw Ludo’s insinuations back in his face and say, _Yes, I am whorespawn, fuck you_? It would probably be more satisfying to pound Ludo’s smug face in, but that would earn Ceill a record that might compromise his Notification.

“You taught me not to be ashamed,” he said, staring at his half-empty plate. “You and Dad and Tilrey—you all taught me to be proud of who I am.”

His mother sighed. “We did. And I hope you are. But Ceill, I feel like there’s something you haven’t considered. How is Gersha going to feel if you start telling people he’s not your ‘real’ father?”

It was like she’d stuck a foot in the clear puddle of Ceill’s thoughts and scrambled them. “That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I’d say.”

“Then what would you say?”

“I’d say . . .” He watched dull announcements play on the cylinder screen, his mind working frantically.

Of course Gersha was his real father, but in one way, while Tilrey was his real father in another way. He honestly wasn’t sure how he’d explain it to anyone who wasn’t already close enough to the family to understand. They might make the wrong assumptions—that Gersha was somehow a victim, or that Tilrey and his mother loved each other, or that he loved one father more than the other rather than loving them differently.

“I just wouldn’t lie,” he said.

“Ceill.” His mother kept looking at him with those eyes that were always clear and proud and full of certainty. When he was little, he’d considered her the ultimate arbiter of all moral questions—even more than Gersha, who had too many doubts.

She said, “The truth is complex enough that outsiders are always only going to grasp half of it. Wouldn’t you rather it’s the half that doesn’t make your father sad?”

Then, without waiting for Ceill’s answer, she reached across the table for the remote and turned up the sound. “I think your stream’s back.”

They watched the rest of the episode in silence. When it was over, and his mother got up to make tea, Ceill helped her clear the table. He asked, “Could I have your handheld to call Uncle Valgund?”

“What for?”

She still looked worried, so Ceill made himself look blank and innocent, as if he’d forgotten their argument entirely. “I want to talk about the stream. We’ve both been watching it.”

His mom and uncle had spent their “misspent youth” together. If she and her friends had ventured into the Outer Ring, Valgund had probably been with them. And he would have fewer scruples about telling Ceill where to get a glimpse of Darius.

If Ceill couldn’t live a truthful life, then at least he could follow in his parents’ footsteps and use a bit of harmless trickery to get what he wanted.

His mother scrutinized him a moment longer, but he must have passed muster. “Don’t take too long,” she said and handed over her device.

“Thank you.” Ceill made his eyes wide. On the threshold, he asked, “What happened to Councillor Lindahl’s nephew, anyway?”

His mother froze. “Don’t ask Valgund about that. It’s painful for him to remember, even after all these years.”

“But what—”

“Garsha Lindahl is the boy who was with your uncle on his mad attempt to traipse out of the city into the Wastes. The one who didn’t make it.” Her eyes bored into his. “I shouldn’t have told you about him. The boy was troubled for all kinds of reasons.”

She was afraid for Ceill. Afraid he’d do something mad and self-destructive if he didn’t get Raised, or even if he did.

Tears flooded Ceill’s eyes. He wanted to throw his arms around her and promise he’d study hard, day and night, to be the son she wanted. A son who could never be reproached for anything.

But he was no longer a little boy who would do anything for his mother’s smile. “Good thing I’m not troubled,” he said coolly, and walked down the hall to his room.

***

Valgund shot out a hand, stopping Bors in his tracks. They were snowshoeing down a long, piney slope that ended some forty yards away in a ragged curtain of boughs.

“What—” Bors started, but he went still when Valgund brought a finger to his lips. He, too, spotted movement through the trees.

Over the past four hikes they’d taken together, whenever Bors was able to get time off work, he’d learned to trust this Linnett, at least when they were in the woods. Valgund had shown him how to walk silently, how to track other walkers, and how to navigate the taiga without his handheld or even a headlamp for the long arctic nights.

And now Valgund was showing him a group of Free Northmen.

Bors’s breathing was loud in his ears. Very quietly, he knelt and slipped the binoculars from his pack.

The sun was already sinking below the horizon, leaving the forest in crepuscular light, but he made out the shapes of three men and a woman wearing Oslov cold-weather gear. Two of them had slung fox pelts around their shoulders. All had long, sloppily braided hair, and the men had scruffy beards, signaling their affiliation to any observer.

They passed a map back and forth, talking in low voices—arguing about the route, Bors suspected, though he couldn’t make out the words. They were traveling one of the trails that he and Valgund had left some time ago to blaze their own path across the backcountry.

Soon enough, the Northmen folded their map, shouldered their packs, and disappeared, heading west. Bors waited until Valgund gave him the all clear. Then they continued down the hill and across the trail, where Bors helped Valgund carefully rub out their tracks.

As they proceeded through a ditch and into the woods again, Bors finally dared to speak. “Do you see them often?”

“Often enough.” Valgund paused to pull off his hat and wipe his face with it. In full daylight—back in summer, when they’d started these hikes—his red-brown hair would have blazed, and Bors would have wondered how it might feel to touch it. He felt an odd pang of regret for those days.

Valgund hadn’t invited him home again, and Bors was grateful for it. Mostly, he did his best not to think about his guide’s unfortunate connection to Tilrey Bronn.

Sometimes, late at night when he couldn’t sleep, he wondered darkly if it even mattered. So what if Bronn was a subversive, as Bors had suspected all this time? Wasn’t Bors a bit of a subversive now himself?

“What do you think the Northmen are doing out here?” he asked, knowing the topic was dangerous but wanting to see what Valgund would say. “What do they want?”

Valgund cut him a skeptical glance. “Since you work for Int/Sec, I’m guessing you know.”

“It could be any number of things.” But Valgund’s face told Bors not to lie. “They’re trying to cultivate sap-bearing trees,” he said as they set out again, all light gone but the snow’s faint glow. “Either that or to find the Sanctioned Sweetbush. They want to control the supply of sap because they believe in the old Feudal faith that its consumption is a sacred act and not a recreational one. Or they just want to stab Redda where it hurts.”

Valgund led the way across a frozen brook, easily avoiding the black ice. “You don’t sound like you entirely disagree with the Northmen.”

Normally Bors would have rebuked Valgund for even suggesting such a thing. But he’d started this conversation, and he was cold and tired. “I don’t,” he said gruffly. “Well, I mean, the religion thing, that’s subversive nonsense. _I_ don’t pray to the Spark. But any fool can see we’re hooked on sap—us, as a society. People just don’t want to talk about addiction. They think merit entitles them to it and merit will keep them from abusing it.”

“I knew some sweet-drowned people in moral rehab.” Valgund’s voice was neutral. “They felt so much shame. They’d been told it was a sign of personal weakness.”

“I knew someone, too!” Bors’s voice was shaking. He had to be careful how he talked about Kai and the Brothel. “A friend. When he didn’t get the Notification he wanted, he just gave up and sapped. He wasn’t able to _want_ to stop until he found his motivation again, and even then it took years to recover.”

“Motivation.” Valgund laughed softly, picking his way up a slope littered with deadfall. “That was always one of my problems. When you’re born a Linnett and you don’t want to be a Linnett, where’s there to go but down?”

“But you have motivation now, don’t you?” Bors didn’t like to think about anyone being lazy or aimless, Valgund especially.

The man had a quiet independence that made Bors feel pleasantly unjudged, the opposite of how he felt around every other Upstart. But that wasn’t exactly an _achievement_ , at least not by any measure Bors knew. By Linnett standards, Valgund was clearly a failure. “I mean, you do all this . . . outdoor stuff,” he said, wishing he could express what he meant.

“Climbing trees is my motivation?”

“Not what I meant.” Bors tripped and caught himself on a hoary trunk. He was still getting the knack of navigating by starlight. “I don’t understand what you do out here, cataloging lichens or whatever, but you seem to enjoy it. And you don’t engage in Hargist shenanigans anymore, which I assume you were doing because of a lack of incentives to behave properly.”

Valgund’s laugh was louder this time. “Shenanigans? You sound like my scolding grandma, may her last moment be bright.”

“Most Hargists need a good scolding.” Bors picked his way among the snow-covered obstacles. “Most of them come from privileged backgrounds and benefit from family connections. If they had to work a little harder, they wouldn’t have time for this silly theater of rebellion.”

“So everybody just needs a little more carrot or stick?” Reaching the brow of the hill, Valgund turned to watch Bors struggle up the last few yards. “Everything’s very simple in your world, Fir Analyst. But you’re not so forthcoming about your own motivations.”

Bors’s snowshoe slipped, and Valgund’s arm shot out to steady him. “Easy. We don’t want you breaking your neck.”

Bors caught the Linnett’s surprisingly strong hand and let himself be pulled up, though he was furious at needing help. “I don’t know what you mean,” he gasped.

Valgund didn’t release Bors until they stood securely on the summit, looking down into the valley together. “I mean your whole reason for being here,” he said. “What you’re looking for. And don’t tell me it’s classified, please, because I’m not stupid. You’re looking for something your superiors wouldn’t want you to find.”

Bors wanted to protest, but he was still catching his breath. Some rebellious part of him yearned to reach for the stability of Valgund’s hand again. “I don’t owe you that information,” he said at last.

Valgund didn’t seem intimidated by the sharp tone—but he never had been scared of Bors, had he, after that first day when Bors pulled the gun on him? Maybe he’d just been biding his time, planning this confrontation all along.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “But sooner or later you’re going to have to tell me if you want me to show you what you’re looking for. Unless you’re hoping to stumble on it yourself, by happenstance.”

When he first came out here, Bors had been foolish enough to imagine that he might indeed find the Sweetbush by blundering around the Southern Range. He knew better now. Even this small, relatively hospitable corner of the Wastes was vast.

He sucked in a breath. “How can I trust you? You cohabit with my enemies.”

“Tilrey and Gersha?” Valgund sounded bemused. “You’ve never explained to me what makes them your enemies, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m not going to tell them you exist, much less why you’re here.”

“That’s quite a statement.” Bors made his voice a pointed instrument, as if he were questioning a suspect. “What if I’m out here to do something that endangers the Republic? Then it would be your duty to report me.”

“Bors, for green’s sake.” Valgund sat himself down in the snow, snowshoes sticking out in front of him. “I’m not a spy. I’m not trying to catch you in a web. Tell me or don’t tell me, but I wish you would, because all this mystery is annoying. And maybe I could _help._ ”

Below them, far down in the valley, shone the reassuring golden lights of the villas and the resort. Soon the hike would end, and Bors would be safe indoors again.

“Why would you help me?” he asked, sitting down beside Valgund.

“Why wouldn’t I? Why are you so suspicious? Is this about Tilrey and Gersha again?”

“It’s about you being a Linnett.” The words came out rough and bitter. “I’ve never known a high name who didn’t look down on me. Hargism, moral rehab—it doesn’t matter. I’m nothing to a person like you, and that’s your birthright.”

The instant the words were out, Bors regretted them. He was whining like a child, resenting his betters like a shirker. The first rule of being Raised was _Show you’re worthy._

When Valgund’s hand grasped his, he gave a start. “It’s fine. I’m not numb.” _And I don’t want your pity._

Valgund didn’t release him. With both their hands encased in puffy gloves, Bors felt only the grip, but he gripped back.

“You’re not nothing to me,” Valgund said in a matter-of-fact way. “I’m lonely, and you’re my company.”

Bors made a scoffing sound. So few people had ever wanted his company. There was Ranek Egil, the traitor who had merely wanted to convert him. There was Kai, who would always put his precious Einara first.

“Of course,” Valgund continued as if to himself, “once I’ve shown you whatever you’re looking for, you probably won’t need me anymore, and I’ll lose my company for good. So maybe I don’t want to know, after all. Maybe I’ll just lead you in circles.”

Bors snorted, but his cheeks warmed despite the scathing cold. “You’re playing games with me.”

“Maybe a little. I _am_ bored.” Valgund sighed, but his grip on Bors’s hand didn’t loosen. “I mean it when I say I’d help you, though. If you’re looking for the same thing the Northmen are . . . well, I don’t want to get in trouble. But I’ve often thought it would be a marvelous jape to tamper with Redda’s sap supply.”

Bors knew he should snatch his hand away and stand up. He knew he should keep his secret, which was also Kai’s and Einara’s. On the jagged horizon, far above the villas, a viridian curtain of aurora unfurled and began to ripple.

“I’m not with the Northmen,” he said. “I don’t want to bring down the Republic, or even the Sanctioned Sweetbush. I want to _save_ them both.”

“The Sweetbush needs saving? It seems to be thriving.”

Had Valgund actually seen the Sweetbush for himself? Green hells, maybe the risk of trusting him was worth it. “That’s only how it looks,” Bors said. “I heard it from the keeper herself—the trees are overworked and in danger. And the best way to save them is” —he lowered his voice, intoxicated by his own daring— “to infect them with a blight. To stop them from producing.”

Valgund’s face was in darkness, but Bors had a sense of the tense, quizzical frown there. “Really? You heard this from the Sweetbush keeper herself?”

“She told the whole Council. I happened to be there.” Now that he’d started spilling, it was surprisingly easy. “And later, when she and I were alone, she told me exactly what a person would do if they happened to want to blight the trees to save them . . .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, who's right, Ceill or Vera?
> 
> Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there! <3


	7. No Chaperone

This was Ceill Linnett’s first time in his life walking on a Reddan street, outdoors and at ground level. Packed snow crunched ominously beneath his boots as he set out from the building where the underground city had spat him out.

“When you leave the tunnels, turn left,” Uncle Valgund had said. “Three or four buildings down, on the right, you’ll see an exterior staircase. Take that to the second-floor parapet and head straight down the first corridor you see. The streamers’ café is there—or it used to be, anyway.”

If only it weren’t so dark and cold, and if only the Outer Ring weren’t so weirdly quiet. It was also Ceill’s first time in the city’s most marginal district, supposedly haunted by all sorts of undesirables—smugglers and sellers of contraband, unsanctioned whores, possibly even Outers.

He wasn’t afraid, he told himself firmly. His schoolmates were always boasting about venturing into the Outer Ring, so it must be less dangerous than its reputation. And he’d explored the lowest levels of Thurskein, vast cellars where people gambled and stowed their smuggled and stolen wares, so lawlessness was nothing new to him.

But he didn’t like how alone he felt on this street or how high the warehouses loomed above him, shuttered for the night. Even the sky was full of turgid gray clouds that hid the stars.

Just as he spied the staircase, a long, low whistle sliced the air perhaps ten yards behind him. Ceill spun around, his heart battering his ribs. He saw only snow shining dully under the wide-spaced streetlights.

The steel staircase glittered with ice and rattled under his weight. He climbed as fast as he could, avoiding the bad spots and holding tight to the railing. It crossed his mind that, if he were murdered here, his parents might blame Valgund.

Maybe he shouldn’t have pulled his uncle into it. But Valgund had understood completely. He hadn’t even asked why Ceill wanted to go to the café, only said, “Your mom wouldn’t want you hanging around there.”

“I know,” Ceill said.

Valgund sighed. “If you go about eleven on a Laborer worknight, you’ll probably find the shooting crew there. Just don’t decide to skip the E-Squareds because you’re going to run away and be an actor. Please.”

Ceill had never considered such a possibility. “Why would I be an actor? I’m not even a good liar.”

“Or a scriptwriter, or a director, or whatever.” Valgund’s voice sounded pained. “I had friends who used to dream about that. But streammakers’ lives probably aren’t as exciting as you think.”

“I won’t run away,” Ceill promised. “I just want to tell somebody something.”

Now, in this cold and horrible place, his promise seemed even more redundant. Who would escape here? He had come for one reason only: to offer whoever wrote the stream a few lessons in depicting the _real_ Thurskein.

And if he got a glimpse of the real Darius into the bargain, he would go home happy.

On the second-floor parapet, he ducked into the comparative shelter of the nearest corridor. It was open to the wind, gusts of snow banked against the concrete walls, as forbidding and lonely as everything else.

At the far end, though, his eyes caught a glimmer of warm, coppery light. He heard a jumble of muffled voices—dozens of people talking and laughing, interspersed with the clinking of glass and crockery.

With a silent thank-you to his uncle, Ceill made a beeline for the unmarked door. Light streamed through vertical rows of glass-brick on either side.

The heavy door slid open, and he found himself in a cramped coldroom. A big woman in a jacket and apron blocked his way. “Got business here, kiddo?”

Ceill had dressed carefully for this escapade; under an old parka that he had borrowed from Tilrey, he had on workout clothes instead of his school uniform. If you squinted, he could be an adult Laborer. But other schoolkids had probably had the same bright idea.

“I’m with the crew,” he said. “I’m the new Thurskein consultant.”

The woman gave him a long look. “You from ’Skein, lad?”

“That I am, Fir’n, up until six months ago.” Ceill gave his Rs a bit of a burr and lengthened his vowels. “Lisha Lindtmerán of Sector Six sent me here when the crew requested somebody. She’s my . . . great-aunt.”

“Yeah?” All of a sudden, the woman’s forbidding face crumpled into a smile. “I got cousins in Six. One of them married a third cousin to Lisha Lindtmerán.”

“Which school did your cousins go to? Mine was 4A.”

“Oh, your family’s grander than mine. It was 10C, I think they said.”

The woman went on, rattling off a list of family and work relationships that tied her to the Laborer city, while Ceill smiled and nodded. “Such a lucky boy you are to get a posting in Redda,” she finished. “Your whole family must be glowing with pride.”

“Oh yes, Fir’n.” He swallowed guiltily. “I’m just doing my best to be worthy of it, you know?”

“You will, lad. I can tell you’re a diligent sort.” She swung the door wide, and Ceill’s heart leapt. “Come along, then.”

Ceill stood frozen. He knew he should stride confidently inside, but the café was jam-packed with strangers.

The long, narrow room was lit mainly by lanterns over the bar, their copper shells pocked to send light dancing everywhere. The air stank of strong liquor and sour milk. People in casual Laborer dress—and sometimes undress—milled between the bar and the tables, their voices rising in rowdy declarations and their laughter coarse-edged.

Ceill was on the verge of making an excuse and ducking out when he saw Darius.

The beautiful black-haired young man stood with one elbow propped on the bar, equally indolent and elegant. He nodded indulgently as a big oaf of an older man talked at him, punctuating whatever he was saying with sweeps of long arms. You could tell Darius wasn’t listening.

Ceill stared, trying to remember why he had come. Thurskein was so far away. There was nothing in the world but him and Darius and the ruddy light that caught and held them in a radiant bubble.

He was barely surprised when Darius pivoted a few degrees, scanning the room, and their eyes locked.

Ceill lowered his at once. Barely breathing, he stared at the dingy concrete floor, all dust and pitting and little spills, until a golden tenor voice said, “I feel like I know you.”

Ceill looked up to find Darius standing a foot away. He was a few inches shorter than Ceill, wearing a heavy fleece over baggy sweats. But his dark eyes were every bit as intense as they’d been when they stared at Ceill through the screen.

What if Darius thought Ceill was like his schoolmates, who came to gawk at the streamers and beg for signatures on their forearms? “I don’t think so,” Ceill whispered. “I . . .”

Darius angled his head, thick hair tumbling into his eyes. “No? But you look familiar.”

Ceill remembered what Ludo had said. “We went to the same school, maybe?”

Darius’s perplexed expression became a grin, as if he’d figured it out. “Forgive me for being forward, but do you live with a Councillor?”

“My father is one.” Ceill was too dazzled to lie.

“Ah.” The smile faded. “I must have been thinking of someone else. But you’re _very_ like him.” The fantasy-come-to-life extended his hand, palm down. “Altmering, Stefan. Not exactly what you were looking for, I’m guessing, little schoolboy. Did you come with your mates?”

Ceill clasped a hand that felt like any hand, a little clammy. His own was trembling. “No, I’m alone,” he said, finally remembering his excuse. “My name’s Ceill Linnett, and I’ve come to talk to whoever writes the stream. To give him some information about Thurskein.”

“Information?” Darius—Stefan—arched a heart-breaking brow. “Forgive me for being nosy again, but what would a Councillor’s son know about Thurskein?”

“My mom’s the Admin of Six.” Ceill couldn’t seem to talk normally, only gulp out words. He took a deep breath. “I grew up there. Partly. I love the stream, but it gets Thurskein all wrong. I couldn’t help noticing.”

A smile played at the corner of Stefan’s lips—the same half-mocking, half-flirtatious one that Darius was always aiming at Markus and Bronia. “Well,” he said, crooking a finger, “I’m sure ‘whoever writes the stream’ would be very interested to hear that. Let me introduce you to him.”

In a trance of terror and desire, Ceill followed Stefan to the bar. Everything he’d carefully planned to say to justify his presence had vanished from his head.

Stefan bent over the big man to whom he’d been talking earlier and whispered in his ear. The man gave a little start and turned to look at Ceill. “What d’you mean?”

Stefan said, “Be polite, Kai. This young man’s the son of a Councillor and a city Admin. He’s come to give you some pointers on Thurskein.”

Now they were face to face, Ceill could see the older man was neither as oafish nor as drunk as he’d thought. He’d clearly once been handsome, and his eyes were sharp and cunning. As they fixed on Ceill, they widened in surprise.

“See what I mean?” Stefan said, so low Ceill barely caught it.

The older man nodded. “Councillor and Admin’s son, eh?” He offered a hand to Ceill. “Meirthal, Kai; I created _Their Ways Parted_. You do us quite an honor, young Fir.”

The sarcasm was subtle but palpable. Ceill clasped the man’s hand sideways, as with an equal, feeling his cheeks flush. “Please don’t. I haven’t been Notified yet.”

“Technicalities.” Kai waved. “Find us a table, Stefan. I can barely hear a word the lad says, and apparently he has important ‘pointers’ to tell me.”

Ceill’s face continued to burn as Stefan led them to a table in the far corner of the room, taking their drinks with him. “Can I get you anything?” he asked Ceill.

The notion of Darius fetching and carrying for him made Ceill’s face burn hotter. He was relieved when Kai said, “Just get him a three-percent. It won’t tip him over.”

“Take a seat, young Fir,” the streammaker added in his rumbling, sardonic way as Stefan returned to the bar. “Now,” he said, leaning closer to create a zone of privacy between him and Ceill, “I suggest you tell me why I shouldn’t call your fancy relations and ask them to fetch you right this moment, before I get in trouble for contributing to the delinquency of a very important minor.”

“I’m not important.” Ceill stumbled over his words. “Please don’t call anyone.”

The streammaker’s brow cocked. “I’m searching my mind for a good reason for you to be here.”

“It’s just—I love _Their Ways Parted_ , Fir Meirthal. Everybody in my dorm-pod loves it. But when it came to the part where Bronia goes to Thurskein to be a teacher, it just seemed wrong to me . . .”

Ceill explained in a rush—how and why he’d lived in Thurskein; how he’d gone to school with Skeinsha children; how there were different classes of people in ’Skein, just like in Redda; how most were intensely aware of their place in Oslov and the world, and only a small percentage were actually beer-swilling idiots who communicated in grunts.

He was surprised to find Kai listening attentively, the way Dad or Tilrey might have done. When Stefan brought the drink, Kai passed it to Ceill without taking his eyes off him. “Go on.”

“And . . . everybody in Thurskein understands about meritocracy and getting Notified. We learn it in school, and we watch the same streams that people in Redda do.” He caught himself. “ _They_ watch the same streams. They know that if they score high enough, they could come to Redda or even be Upstarts. But it hardly ever happens, and most of them don’t want to leave behind their families and everybody they know, so they don’t think _much_ about it.”

“That makes sense,” Kai said. “I guess I just always assumed Skeinshaka were, well, doing their own thing. Not interested in Redda.”

“That’s true, too. But it’s not because they’re ignorant,” Ceill added hastily. “Some of them actually choose another way of living—the Free Northmen, for instance.”

He gulped his drink. The beer was weak but sour, and the bubbles went up his nose, making him cough as he realized he shouldn’t have said that. Reddan Laborers probably weren’t supposed to know the Free Northmen existed. According to Aleks, Int/Sec kept them closely surveilled.

Kai patted him on the back. “Easy there, lad. Have you said your piece?”

Ceill nodded. He took a small sip this time, willing himself to keep it down.

“He has a point,” Stefan said. “We’re the ignorant ones. I mean, I’ve never set foot in Thurskein. And I imagine you haven’t either, being a Strutter and all.”

Ceill’s head jerked up. Could a streammaker be an Upstart?

“My _parents_ are Strutters,” Kai said in a warning tone. “But no, I’ve never visited either of the Laborer cities. I portray them based on what I’ve seen in other streams.”

“That’s the exact problem.” The beer was loosening Ceill’s tongue again. “The scenes in ’Skein feel like every other stream, but the scenes in Redda are so _real_. It’s like you know exactly how it feels to be someone like me.”

Stefan directed a small smirk at Kai. “Because he has been that person. He only writes about himself.”

“Shush.” Kai swatted Stefan with a sheaf of papers. “Everyone’s a critic.”

It was so surreal, being here with the two of them, that Ceill briefly lost his train of thought. “But what if the parts about Thurskein felt real, too?” he said at last. “Wouldn’t that just make the stream better?”

Kai’s eyes fixed on Ceill’s with surprising earnestness. “Here’s the thing, lad,” he said. “No one expects streams to be ‘real’—or ‘good,’ for that matter. They’re just supposed to entertain the masses—Drudges and schoolkids and the like. If they were _too_ real, they might get in trouble with the censors, especially when they’re depicting Thurskein to a mostly Reddan audience. Reddan Drudges want desperately to believe that, even if they’re less than Strutters, they’re better than _somebody_.”

He swept out a big hand to encompass the city. “So, yeah, the Thurskein subplot isn’t real. It’s feeding the target audience what they want to believe—that people in the Laborer cities are sweet, simple dolts who would never rise up and try to replace them.”

“So cynical, Kai,” Stefan said. “Let the poor boy keep his illusions at least till he’s through Uni.”

It was the sort of thing Darius would have said, but Ceill didn’t like being on the other end of it. His throat tightened. “I’m not _naïve_. I understand about the censors. But I can’t believe they wouldn’t let you have a few Skeinsha characters who aren’t utter . . . dumb-asses.”

He felt daring using the word with two adults, but neither blinked at it. “He has a point,” Stefan said again.

“I guess.” Kai ran a hand through his hair, which was long enough to show some wave; maybe he liked to show off that he still had a full head of it.

Vain people always seemed silly to Ceill. Tilrey ( _my father_ ) wasn’t balding yet either, but he kept his hair neatly clipped.

“I suppose,” the streammaker said at last, “we could use you as a kind of consultant. Could you come to the set next ten-day?”

Ceill’s heart jolted against his chest wall. Until this instant, he hadn’t realized he wanted to see them making the stream, but _yes, yes._ “Yes,” he said as levelly as he could. “I have free-nights on fifth- and eighth-day.”

“Let’s make it fifth-day. Did you come via the underground city? Exit in the same place you did today, and I’ll have someone meet you and bring you to our studio.” Kai sat upright. “Right now, though, you need an escort back to your home Ring.”

“I volunteer,” Stefan said, freezing every muscle in Ceill’s body.

But Kai greeted the offer as if it were a joke. “Sorry, m’lad. Can’t spare you.” He waved at someone across the room. “Katya’ll do it for a V.”

“I don’t need a chaperone,” Ceill protested, his face burning again. He didn’t know whether he was disappointed or relieved that he wouldn’t have to try to make conversation with Stefan. The young man’s irony had a hostile edge that you didn’t feel when you were watching him on a screen.

“I have a feeling your Fir Parents would disagree, young Fir.” Kai beckoned to the invisible Katya. “And humble folk like us don’t need any trouble with Councillors. So run along to bed now, and we’ll meet again soon.”

***

The next morning in the laundry room of the Brothel, Kai slipped an arm around Einara’s waist and nuzzled her neck. “You’ll never guess who I met last night at the café.”

“Who?” Einara tugged away from him. She was busy sorting and folding Hulda’s washing, a task she still insisted masochistically on doing herself. The more she wanted to kill the ailing director, the more conscientiously she tended to her.

Twice in the past four months she had obtained poisons with the intent of finishing off Hulda herself. Once she’d gone so far as measuring and grinding the pills. But right before she stirred them into the director’s porridge, she had a vivid vision of what Hulda might say as she grasped what was happening to her.

The old woman would smile. Maybe even laugh. _I always knew it would come to this. I hope you know you’re doing me a favor, my dear._ Sometimes Einara thought the only reason Hulda clung so hard to life was that she wanted the satisfaction of seeing her protégée become a full-fledged monster.

So, no. Hulda would die ignobly in a hospital bed, gasping for breath. She didn’t deserve the elaborate forms of vengeance that Einara had concocted in her dreams—too late, alas—for the deceased Malsha Linnett.

_Why_ had he attacked her homeland? What motive could possibly outweigh the price of an exile that Oslovs saw as tantamount to death? Those were the questions that tormented her now.

She tried to focus on Kai, who looked ridiculously pleased with himself. “More of your set gossip? You know that, unless it involves a high official doing something embarrassing, I’m not interested.”

“Oh, but you will be interested in this. You know those photos you’re so obsessed with? The ones I imitated with Stefan?”

Einara’s breath caught. Hulda had shown her those photos long ago, before she even knew Kai or he became the photographer’s apprentice. “Tilrey Bronn? You met him at the café?”

“Huh? No. Bronn’s my age, right? This was a kid. Seventeen, eighteen. But whoever it is, he’s the spitting image of the boy in the pictures. It’s eerie.”

Einara swallowed her disappointment. After all these years, she still hadn’t had so much as an introduction to Hulda’s greatest ally in the resistance. “Tilrey Bronn _is_ the boy in the pictures,” she reminded him. “They were taken when he was still the Island Party’s kettle boy.”

“Fine, so I’m better with pictures than names.” Kai began to pair up a pile of socks. “Anyway, it’s probably just a weird coincidence. The boy at the café wasn’t Laborer-born; he’s a Councillor’s kid. But you should’ve seen him.”

Einara shook out a sheet with brisk, savage motions. “What was a Councillor’s kid doing at the café?”

“Oh, the usual.” Kai grabbed the other end of the sheet and helped her fold it. “He was starstruck. I would’ve given him the brush-off, but his face got me curious. Stefan saw the resemblance, too. I asked the kid to come around to the set next ten-day, just in case you want a peek at him.”

“I never come to set. You know that.” But Einara’s mind was working. The sheet hung in her arms, forgotten. “What’s this boy’s name?”

“It started with a K sound, like mine. Ceiran? Cor? But the last name’s more important—Linnett.”

_A Linnett._ A cold shudder ran through Einara, temporarily expelling the steamy heat that permeated the Brothel.

Kai knew nothing of her true origin, her revenge plan, or her enemy, and he had probably forgotten the piece of “gossip” that Bors Dartán had passed to him long ago. But she hadn’t, and now pieces were clicking together in her head. Tilrey Bronn and Vera Linnett had had a series of mysterious meetings at Vera’s apartment less than a year before her marriage to Gersha Gádden, right around the time her child would have been conceived. Bors believed the child was a misbirth. How old would that child be now? Yes. Seventeen or eighteen.

Einara had hoarded the nugget of information for nearly that long, waiting to find a use for it. But somehow she had failed until now to grasp the most important part: Bronn’s misbirth (if Bors’s hunch were right) bore the name of her greatest enemy.

“Linnett.” Saying it aloud sent another shiver down her spine. “Is he related to the General Magistrate who was exiled? Malsha Linnett?”

“Prob’ly.” Kai hitched up his shirt to scratch the small of his back. “I was at school with Vera Linnett—super uptight. She was the Magistrate’s granddaughter.”

Einara felt giddy, as if she might blow up like a balloon and float into the arctic sky. “Then this is the Magistrate’s great-grandson.”

“He’s Vera’s kid? How do you know?” Kai matched another pair of socks.

Einara took them away from him and wrapped her arms around his back, feeling the jutting ridges of muscle. Her heart was beating wildly; he could probably feel it. But he would never know why.

“Unlike you, my love,” she said, “I pay attention and remember things, and the resemblance clinches the case. I want to meet this young Linnett.”

Kai pressed against her. “I thought you said—”

“I prefer to stay here, yes. Every time a Brothel keeper leaves the Brothel, she loses a fraction of her mystique and hence her power. Hulda taught me that. And that’s why you will find a way to bring the boy to me.”

“This is related to your plan somehow? The Northmen thing? The kid did mention them—he spent time in Thurskein for his mom’s job—but I didn’t think—”

“Of course. It’s part of the plan.” Until this moment, it hadn’t been, but Kai needed to think that all the threads were connected, and that Einara had a view of the full tapestry. “You’ll bring him to tea here,” she said, filing the Thurskein detail away for future examination.

Kai frowned. “Seriously? His parents would freak.”

“If they knew, yes. But he came to you, so he must already have secrets from them.” She gave him a cool, serene kiss. “Do it. I want to see those old photos spring to life in front of me. I hope you’re not exaggerating.”


	8. The Red Room

The studio blinded Ceill at first. Emerging from the dark warehouse corridor, he stood dazzled by the lights that were everywhere, perched on stalks and hanging from rafters. They made the open, white-walled space look even bigger than it was, the ceiling high as an airplane hangar’s. In the center of the room, people hovered around a flimsy three-walled enclosure, adjusting mysterious equipment.

Katya, the pinched-faced woman who had brought him from the underground city, raised a finger to her lips. Pointing to a handful of folding chairs, she said, “Sit in the third row, Fir, and don’t make a sound. They’re taping.”

That was when Ceill realized the enclosure was actually a set, with a backdrop representing a nice bedroom like a Councillor’s. Just outside it stood Kai, bending over a big camera mounted on a tripod. He lifted his head and said in a commanding voice, “Go again!”

Ceill tiptoed to the last row of folding chairs, holding his breath.

He watched as Stefan and an older man acted out a scene, with frequent interruptions from Kai and a young woman who kept making a clapping sound and yelling, “Marker!” They repeated the scene at least eight times before Kai was satisfied, with long breaks in between. Sometimes Kai went and talked to the actors about saying things differently, and sometimes he fiddled with the camera’s controls and consulted with the people who moved the lights.

It took Ceill three takes to figure out that the scene was set in the Sanctioned Brothel, where Darius was servicing his first patron. He watched in horrified fascination as the actors ran through their short interaction again, the patron lascivious and Darius practically daring him to do his worst.

“I want to see the _fear_ , Stefan,” Kai yelled. “You’re mouthing off, but underneath, you’re nervous. You don’t really want to do this.”

Stefan scowled and made an obscene gesture behind Kai’s back, to the delight of the crew. But the next time they repeated the scene, his eyes glittered as he looked at the older man, and he fidgeted, his body taut as if he were tempted to run.

Those tiny shifts, Ceill realized, were acting. He couldn’t imagine having that sort of control of his face and body.

Four more takes later, he was no longer horrified or fascinated. He was finding this rather tiresome. But he was still brimming with questions when Kai said, “Okay, that’s a wrap,” and everybody started milling around and chatting.

Feeling terribly out of place, Ceill stayed glued to the chair, waiting for someone to tell him what to do. When Stefan came over and flopped down in the neighboring seat, his breath caught hard.

Stefan grinned. “Do I scare you, young Fir?”

“No! I . . .” Ceill blinked. “It’s just weird being here. Seeing how you do it. And I didn’t know it was true about, uh, Darius going to the Sanctioned. Somebody at school said so, but I didn’t believe him.”

“Does that scandalize you?” Stefan was getting his devilish look again. “Does it bother you that Darius would let himself fall so far?”

“No!” Ceill reddened. Everybody said most actors were whores of some kind or another. “I mean, it’s an honorable posting, right? As long as it’s sanctioned.”

“Sure, an ‘honorable posting.’” Stefan took a rice bar from his pocket and munched on it. “That must be why Kai’s Strutter parents still won’t speak to him.”

“Is Kai . . .” Ceill wasn’t sure of the least offensive word to use. “Does he work at the Brothel?”

“Not the way you’re thinking. But he used to, and he still lives there. So do I.” The dark eyes fixed on Ceill’s, daring him to disapprove. “I guess your folks’ve warned you about people like us. Bottom feeders, whores, scum of the city.”

“No, actually.” Ceill thought of Tilrey, and blood flooded his cheeks again. “My, uh . . . my father’s secretary used to be his kettle boy. They’re not ashamed of it. They’ve been together my whole life.”

He wished so badly he had better words to describe things. When they were alone with him, Dad and Tilrey often called each other “husband,” but he’d learned very early not to repeat the word outside the family. “Secretary” was completely inadequate; they were partners in every sense of the word.

“How sweet,” Stefan said, rolling his eyes, and Ceill knew he didn’t understand. He was probably assuming, like everybody else, that Tilrey just had a cushy long-term arrangement with the Councillor.

“Anyway,” the actor continued, “Kai says he has some script pages to show you. Wanna come see how the camera works?”

Ceill did, very much. But after seeing Kai at work, he was more shy of him than he’d been last time. “If I’m not bothering him too much,” he said, ducking his head.

“We’re done for the night anyway. C’mon.”

When they came over, Kai broke off his conversation with a crew member, making Ceill blush yet again. “I wasn’t sure we’d see you!” he said, clasping Ceill’s hand as if the two of them were old friends. “Come over here and see how the magic happens.”

Then there was no room in Ceill’s head for anything but the streammaker’s equipment. He watched, rapt, as Kai showed him how to focus, pan, and zoom and explained the rules of framing.

Everything looked different on the camera’s viewfinder screen, and you controlled everything viewers saw. Imagine if he could do that in his own life—light himself in a way that made him look more confident; coax people’s attention away from everything embarrassing.

He asked Kai questions, and Kai answered with more demonstrations. Before Ceill knew it, the crew had packed up for the night and departed, and they were nearly alone in the echoing studio.

“Kai-ai,” Stefan complained from the two chairs he was sprawled across. “Everybody’s left without us.”

“We’re not going to the café tonight. We need a quieter place for talking.” Kai lifted the camera off its tripod and zipped it into a bag, then turned to Ceill. “I still want to give you some pages and have a chat about Thurskein. Unless you have a curfew?”

Ceill shook his head. His mom was in Thurskein for a few days, and he’d taken the opportunity to use her apartment, telling Gersha he was staying at school to study. “Nobody’s waiting up for me.”

“Good!” Kai exchanged a swift glance with Stefan. “I thought we could have a nicer tea at our digs. My wife loves guests, and she makes an excellent butter tea.”

Stefan tossed his rice-bar wrapper at Kai. “Stop trying to impress him! You two aren’t even married.”

“We are in spirit.” A furrow had appeared between Kai’s brows. “Of course,” he added, turning to Ceill, “I understand if you’d rather not. Our digs are perfectly safe and comfortable, but they’re not what you’re used to.”

Ceill realized all at once where they were talking about—the Sanctioned Brothel. Stefan had said, _He still lives there. And so do I_.

He’d only seen the place from the outside: a squat black slab at the core of the city, right on the edge of the Sector. But he knew the crude jokes his classmates told about the Brothel. He’d just watched—eight times!—a scene in which a boy from a good family was sucked into its gaping maw.

_At least Tilrey was never one of_ those _. Sanctioned or not, it’s a degrading way to live._ Who had said that? His mother or grandmother, in some overheard conversation long ago.

Stefan was on his feet, zipping up his fleece. “The kid’s scared,” he said. “Can’t blame him. First time I came through that door, I was petrified.”

“He’s a guest, and we won’t use the front door, you dunce. We’ll use the service entrance, nice and discreet.” Kai looked at Ceill with obvious worry, despite his light tone. “Up to you, young Fir. I promise no harm will come to you. But if it unsettles you, being there—”

“No!” Ceill’s cheeks burned. He’d heard boys in his dorm-pod spin elaborate fantasies about sneaking into the Brothel just for a glimpse of the Jewels. He couldn’t say no to a chance to have tea in that forbidden realm, even if it did fill him with a dread he couldn’t define.

He was not Tilrey. No one would ever force him to do things he didn’t want to.

“I’m _not_ scared,” he said, shooting a defiant glance at Stefan. “I’m happy to accept your generous invitation.”

***

The service entrance to the Brothel looked like any loading dock, cold and empty after hours. Kai pressed a buzzer beside a heavy metal door. After a moment, it opened to reveal a tall man with flame-red hair and something shiny dangling from one earlobe, which tinkled softly as he moved aside to let them pass.

Ceill couldn’t help staring. He’d seen a few Northmen and –women wearing earrings, but no one in Redda did. And the man’s tidy gray jerkin and trousers indicated he was R-5, perhaps the steward of this place, far from any sort of outlaw.

The redhead stared straight back. His kohl-lined eyes widened. “Do I know you, lad?”

“Mind your manners, Ansha.” Kai led Ceill past the steward into a dim hallway. “And none of your off-color wit, either. Our guest is a fine lad from a very good family.”

“I wasn’t trying to make a joke.” The steward just kept looking at Ceill. “What family, if I may ask?”

“You mayn’t.” Kai grabbed Ceill’s arm and steered him onward, calling over his shoulder, “Where’s Einara set up?”

“Red Room,” the steward said.

They reached the Red Room through a labyrinth of corridors—first narrow, unadorned concrete, then wood-paneled with soft carpeting and lights tucked artfully above eye level. This part of the Brothel was as luxurious as any dwelling Ceill had ever known. But as the door of the Red Room swung open, he realized his standard of luxury needed resetting.

This was no Oslov room. The walls were covered with textured paper, or perhaps even fabric, in florid shades of scarlet and amethyst. The lamps were draped with filmy scarves of the same colors. A thick carpet with an alien pattern covered the floor, and enormous ceramic vessels held an assortment of tropical plants like the ones at the Restaurant, their reptilian stalks capped by drooping flowers. The air had a sweet, smoky tinge that reminded Ceill of the forbidden pipes that Aleks and his friends smoked.

As he stood gawking, a woman rose from the low table and came toward him, holding out her hands.

She was dressed in a crimson robe with a long skirt and a sash that emphasized her narrow waist, and she took Ceill’s breath away. Women in general held no great sexual interest for him, and this was a woman closer to his mother’s age than his own, but he couldn’t help staring. The way she held her head and shoulders, the noble symmetry of her features, the piercing blue eyes—there was something savage and elevated about her at once. A Feudal lady might look this way.

She inclined her head and said in perfect Reddan Oslov, “You honor us, young Fir.”

Ceill flushed and forgot his manners. “I—I—what is this place?”

“A room where we normally entertain patrons,” the woman said. Her voice was low and sweet, but with a tinge of irony that reminded him of Stefan. “It’s been adorned in the fashion of a Harbourer mansion. Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful.” He hastily offered her his hand. “Thank you so much for having me, Fir’n . . .”

The woman clasped his hand like an equal without having to be asked to do so. Her eyes sized him up, neutral but intent. “Einara.”

“Derán. Einara Derán. She’s the deputy director here.” Kai sounded flustered, as if Einara threw him off balance, too. He bustled around pulling out seats at the low table, ushering Ceill into one and Stefan into the other. Then he mumbled something about fetching the tea tray and disappeared through a tapestry-covered opening.

“ _I’ve_ never seen this room before,” said Stefan, who seemed perfectly at his ease with Einara.

“If you saw patrons, you would, and often.” Einara sat down between them, the skirts of her robe settling around her with a soft shiver. “Only R-11s can lawfully enjoy this sort of luxury—or decadence, if you will.”

_Was_ it decadence? Ceill felt lightheaded. Gersha had raised him on stories about Harbour, promising to take him there for a visit when he was of age. But until this moment he hadn’t understood just how different a place could be from Oslov. Imagine having all these colors around you, all the time.

Even Einara seemed foreign and new, though perhaps that was an illusion created by her garments. Hadn’t Kai called her his wife? She couldn’t be foreign, then.

“My father’s very fond of Harbour,” he said, reaching for the first thing that came to mind—then worried that he was showing off.

“His father the _Councillor_ ,” Stefan drawled. “Do you know, Einara, we’re in the presence of a Linnett?”

“Be decent, Stefan,” Einara said simply. To Ceill she said, “I apologize. People like us tend to be somewhat over-conscious of rank.”

“It’s fine,” Ceill muttered. She gave him a strange feeling, itchy and off-kilter and excited at once, that reminded him of Aleks Snowblind.

“Ah, but it’s not always fine. No one deserves to be treated with rudeness or resentment.” Einara rose to take the heavy tea tray from Kai, who’d gotten himself tangled in the door tapestry. “Let me pour, my love.”

Ceill was grateful for the interval of pouring and serving, which gave him time to compose himself. On the way here, he hadn’t given a single thought to Kai’s “wife,” let alone expected her to dominate the gathering. Even Kai, who’d been so firmly in charge at the studio, was quietly handing around the rice cakes as if waiting to receive his cues from her.

When they’d all had their first sips, Einara turned to Ceill again. “Kai tells me you’re something of an expert on Thurskein. Tell me, how does a Councillor’s son come to spend so much time in a Labourer city?”

“I’m not an expert! I just have some experience.” Was she making fun of him, despite the cool respect in her tone?

In as few words as possible, Ceill repeated what he’d told Kai and Stefan about his mother’s job and his unusual upbringing. With Einara’s eyes fixed attentively on him, he found himself admitting more: “When I was little, I even liked ’Skein better than Redda because we went outdoors during school hours and ran around in the fresh air, instead of just in the gym.”

“Best of both worlds, eh, young Fir?” Kai said.

Einara kept her eyes on Ceill. “You must have a much broader view of the world than your peers in Redda.”

“I don’t know.” Was she trying to flatter him? “Whenever I came back from ’Skein to Redda, they made fun of me here. Called me Dak Drudgebound. I tried to tell them what they were missing, but I guess that made me stupid—in their minds, anyway.”

“Strutter schoolboys are monsters,” Kai said airily. “It’s like a badge of honor not to be interested in anything but your Notification and your dream posting—eh, Stefan?”

Stefan’s eyes flashed. “Speak for yourself. I was never a Strutter.”

“Neither was I, technically.”

Einara’s gaze hadn’t moved from Ceill, as if the other two weren’t even there. “But of course,” she said, “being the son of a Linnett and a Gádden, you must have provoked envy among your classmates. And then looking the way you do.”

What did she mean? Oh. He blushed yet again. “Nobody’s jealous of me. Believe me. I’m not very _technev_. I’m nowhere near the top of my class.”

“Always this obsession with being ‘technical,’” Einara said. “Kai has tried to explain it to me, but I fear I may never understand. I wasn’t born an Oslov, you see,” she added in the same placid tone. “I’m just a poor barbarian who was given the priceless gift of your citizenship.”

An Outer? That explained the strange Feudal air about her, despite her Reddan accent. Ceill had never met an actual Outer before, though Aleks and the other Northmen claimed to be on good terms with some. “Do you worship the Spark, then?” he asked curiously. “Or that other thing—the fanning out of the light?” In the air, he traced one of the symbols the Northmen favored.

A slow smile curved her lips. “In my tribe, we spoke of the Light Web. How would you know about any of that, young Fir?”

“Ceill knows some Free Northmen,” Kai said. “Didn’t you say so in the café?”

Oh, Ceill regretted that slip now. “I know _of_ them,” he said tightly. “Everyone in Sector Six does. With the beards and hair, they’re hard to miss.”

“I’m sure a Councillor’s son would never associate with such malcontents,” Einara said.

Was she making fun of Ceill, the way Stefan sometimes did? He didn’t like it. “Actually,” he said, “when I was thirteen, I entered one of the Northmen’s athletic competitions and won—sort of. Their leader himself gave me a token.”

Einara rested her chin on her palm. “Tell me.”

Ceill told her the story, omitting the part where Aleks Snowblind inadvertently and momentously revealed to him that they were _both_ misbirths. “I expected him to hate me for being from an Upstart family, but he was kind, even though I’d broken the rules of the contest and practically given myself a concussion. Some people say the Northmen hate Redda and want to bring it down, but I don’t think that’s true.”

“No?” The gauzy lights reflected in Einara’s eyes. “What do you think the Northmen want?”

“I don’t know.” Ceill gave himself a little shake. He couldn’t seem to be sensible tonight. “I think maybe they want . . . respect. People in ’Skein aren’t blank slates that people from Redda can come in and write on. They have their own culture, their own goals.”

“That’s good.” Kai slipped a notebook from his fleece and scribbled in it. “Someone needs to tell Bronia that in the next episode. Before I forget—” He reached under the table and handed Ceill a folder. “That’s a new scene I just drafted—the Sector Supervisor giving Bronia what-for. Reminding her of the dignity of manual labor and all that. That’s part of the ‘culture’ of Thurskein, right?”

“I guess.” There was a lot more to it than that, but if Ceill started talking again with Einara gazing at him, he might end up confessing to his ongoing secret meetings with Aleks Snowblind. “I should probably go,” he said, tucking the folder under his arm. “It’s way after midnight.”

Einara raised a watch to her eyes in a languid movement. “So it is. Thank you for the conversation, Ceill. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Thank you, too. Uh. You’re welcome.” Was she patronizing him the way adults sometimes did? But her expression had nothing overdone about it.

“You’re always welcome here. If you come again, and you’re interested, I can tell you a bit about life in the Wastes.” She shot a wry glance at Kai. “Not everyone is interested, believe me.”

“I would be,” Ceill said. “Very much.”

Einara rose and smiled radiantly, making his chest swell with warmth as if he were standing directly in the sun. “Let me walk you out.”

***

They accompanied Ceill to the door of the loading dock, Einara carrying the tea tray. When the outer door had closed behind the Linnett boy, Kai said, “Why didn’t you ask him about Tilrey Bronn? I thought that was the point—to get closer to him.”

“Shh.” Einara cut a glance at the hovering Brothel steward. Thanks to her efforts, Ansha was more loyal to her than not—unlike his predecessor, Svesinov, who had retired some years ago. But there was always a remote possibility he might try to curry favor with Hulda by reporting what he’d seen tonight.

“We need to move slowly with the boy,” she said as they stepped back into the overheated air of the Brothel. “He’ll be back here, believe me.”

“How can you be sure? He seemed scared stiff.”

“He was nervous at first, wasn’t he?” Ceill’s shyness had come as a surprise to her, given his uncanny resemblance to his father in other respects. Though Einara had never met Tilrey Bronn in the flesh, she imagined him as an older version of a Jewel, someone whose natural gifts made him headstrong and arrogant.

Well, Ceill was a child still, and Oslovs sheltered their children to an outrageous degree. By the time _she_ was seventeen, she already knew how to kill a man with her bare hands and had several times come close to doing so.

Ceill Linnett would never know how close he’d come to drinking a dose of poison in his tea. She had seriously considered obtaining some fraction of her revenge immediately, but her pragmatism had won out.

And she was lucky it had. Besides being a line to Tilrey, the boy appeared to be on cordial terms with Aleks Snowblind.

As they reached the kitchen, the steward came up behind them. “Was that kid really a Strutter?” he asked, sounding incredulous. “He looks just like a kettle boy I knew when I was Lindahl’s.”

Kai shot a glance at Einara, who said, “The boy’s mother is a Linnett.”

“No kidding.” The steward’s hazel eyes narrowed. “Makes you wonder, though, don’t it? Tilrey never was happy with his station.”

“Tilrey Bronn? You know him, Ansha?” The man was always name-dropping the politicians he’d serviced back when he was a kettle boy himself. Perhaps Einara should have listened better.

“Knew him. Before Lindahl screwed me over and I ended up here.” Ansha grimaced. He was still fit and slender, and you could see what a glowingly handsome boy he’d been in his day. He insisted on wearing that ridiculous earring as a memento of his former occupation, given to him by a Councillor long ago.

“I always thought Tilrey did a shit job as a whore,” he added, warming to his subject. “I mean, he was gorgeous, but he didn’t even try to make those crumbling Councillors think he wanted them. He couldn’t be bothered to crack a smile. Me, I made them _happy_.” He looked wistful. “But I guess the joke was on me, because Gersha Gádden fell madly in love with Tilrey and made him his secretary basically for life. Meanwhile Lindahl tossed me out and told me to fend for myself.”

Kai looked more interested now. “I forgot you were with Lindahl.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times.” Ansha lifted his chin. “I was Fir Councillor Lindahl’s trusted piece of currency for _years_.”

“The bastard didn’t reward you for all those years of service? What was his excuse?”

Ansha’s face hardened at the memory. “I wasn’t smart enough.” He imitated a high-named Upstart’s drawl: “ _You’re not_ qualified _to be my secretary, and it would go against meritocracy for me to give you the posting_. Fucking prig. When I heard what he did to Stefan, I wasn’t a bit surprised.”

“The man has a lot to answer for.” Kai glanced at Einara as he said it, and she realized he was silently asking permission to pursue his own ends.

She arched a brow— _be careful, run everything by me_ —before giving him the smallest nod. Why not let him and Stefan have a little revenge plot of their own?

“Not like we can do much about it, though,” Ansha said. “Lindahl’s tight with Lindblom, and she’s head of this new Peninsula Coalition. They say she could be GM soon.”

Kai leaned toward the steward conspiratorially. “You, me, and Stefan should talk.”

They fell behind, whispering together, while Einara went into the kitchen to wash up the tea things, trusting Kai to keep her goals in mind, too. Ansha was a gossip. While Kai was plotting how to give Lindahl a comeuppance, he would also pump the steward for any info about Bronn she’d missed.

But now she had something much better than second-hand knowledge. From the way Ceill Linnett had listened to her, the way he’d gazed at her in that tacky faux-Harbourer room, and most importantly the way he’d stared at Stefan, she knew he’d be back.

She would reel him in artfully, as Hulda had taught her, figuring out what he wanted and giving it to him. She would bide her time before she brought up Aleks Snowblind again, or Tilrey Bronn at all.

The Brothel was where fantasies came to life. And even a young Linnett had fantasies, didn’t he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a short chapter after this, so I'll probably just post that later this week. Thanks for reading! <3


	9. The Sweetbush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's a shortish chapter (with kissing). Thanks for reading, and have a good (and safe) weekend! <3

“It looks so . . . small,” Bors said.

They were stretched on the edge of an icy ledge halfway up Mount Eisha, gazing into a narrow valley below. Mount Kantjen and the neighboring ridge loomed on the other side, effectively closing off the valley to ground transportation.

Valgund pointed out the radiant circle of the helipad, just outside the oblong enclosure with its four guard towers. Within that enclosure lay the Sanctioned Sweetbush—several dozen neat rows of small, gnarled muirthorn pines, visible in the arctic night only as humps in the snow.

This bleak little outpost was the source of every sap vial that the government harvested and handed out to its upstanding representatives and citizens, who in turn passed some of those vials down to their trusted retainers, contraband suppliers, and bed partners. These scrawny trees supplied the thriving trade with Harbour for luxury goods.

“It is small,” Valgund agreed. “But, with modern methods to maximize the yield, I guess it’s enough.”

The Feudals believed sap had been given to humans by an owl demon and conferred the gift of prophecy, showing drinkers the past and future. Their lords monopolized the harvest and used it to keep their vassals in line. When he framed the founding principles of Oslov, Whyberg did his best to ban sap as a dangerous distraction. But old habits ran deep, and the old ways of maintaining power survived to this day, thanks to this modern installation deep in the mountains.

“It’s enough for now.” Bors’s teeth were chattering. “But Grenfeill says that, if they keep working the trees as hard as they have been, the harvest is bound to fail one day. Maybe soon.”

The spy’s strained voice snapped Valgund out of his historical reverie. They’d hiked much farther to get here than they usually did, in sub-zero cold and utter darkness, and Bors wasn’t as used to these treks as Valgund.

“Let’s get back out of the wind.” Valgund grabbed Bors’s gloved hands and rubbed them vigorously between his own. They’d taken enough of these frigid hikes together that he could do this without asking permission; Bors trusted him to keep them both safe.

Bors didn’t flinch, but he objected, “I need photos.”

“I’ll get them. You drink some of this.” Valgund handed Bors his thermos, then pulled out his handheld and snapped several images of the Sweetbush, zooming in on the fuzzy darkness. Maybe Bors’s surveillance software could do something with them.

_I’m helping a madman misuse the power of his own organization._ No matter how loyal Bors claimed to be to the Republic—a claim he still made fervently every chance he got—Valgund knew the Republic’s governors would see him differently. But it was hard to argue with Bors about anything, let alone convince him he was becoming one of the “shirkers” he claimed to despise.

When Bors finally confessed what he was looking for, Valgund had briefly wondered if the spy was sent to lure _him_ into treason. But entrapping one humble biologist couldn’t possibly be worth the trouble.

No, Valgund wasn’t worried about Bors hauling him into Int/Sec. Now that he’d offered up his one great bargaining chip, though, was this the end of their friendship? Would the spy be off without a backward glance?

Valgund couldn’t deny to himself that he didn’t want that to happen, even if the alternative was getting more deeply involved in a scheme that was hare-brained at best and deadly at worst.

“Don’t send those pics over your net node.” Bors’s voice was still shaky. “Need to do a secure transfer.”

“I know. C’mon.” Valgund tucked the thermos away, slung an arm around the smaller man’s waist, and heaved him upright. Together they trudged up the slope into the cover of the snow-heavy trees. “Back on the trail. Keep the blood pumping. Raise those knees and march, soldier!”

Bors giggled—a strange sound from him. “You’d make a terrible officer.”

“I know.” Valgund didn’t loose his hold on Bors until the trail narrowed, heading downhill, and they had to walk in single file. “Watch your footing,” he cautioned.

“Yes, sir.” Bors seemed giddy—with excitement over the Sweetbush and not with hypothermia, Valgund hoped.

They were silent for a bit, picking their way down the icy slope. When it began to level off, Bors said, “Councillor Gádden doesn’t know you know about this place, does he?”

“No.” Bors usually avoided the subject of Gersha; he must be very worried to bring it up, Valgund thought. “He doesn’t know himself, I would guess. The location’s highly classified.”

“You won’t tell him you brought me here?”

“As I’ve already told you a thousand times, no, I will not.” Valgund wondered what the next step in the plan was. Did Bors have allies, or was he somehow hoping to sabotage the Sweetbush all by himself? Posing those questions would be tantamount to asking to be included in the plot, though, and then Bors might shut him down with a cold glare. Valgund wasn’t ready for that.

“I imagine you’ve mapped our route here and back,” he said instead, feeling like a coward. “So you won’t need your guide anymore.”

“That’s right.” After a moment, Bors added in his old canny spy’s tone, “But if _someone_ were to want to act on this information, they would need help from a botanist, wouldn’t they? Somebody who knows where to get this blight fungus and how to inject the trees?”

“They would, yes.” Was that an invitation? Valgund’s heart leapt with mingled excitement and unease. What Bors was proposing was dangerous, potentially even deadly to his quiet little life, and he didn’t want to seem eager. “You must have allies in your anti-sap cause. Maybe Grenfeill herself would do the injections—it was her idea, after all.”

“She won’t risk her career and her freedom. She made that clear to me without saying it out loud.”

“Then you’ll have to find somebody braver or with less to lose. You _do_ have allies, don’t you?”

“Yes, I have allies! I just can’t give you details, obviously. You think I’m mad enough to try this alone?” Bors made an exasperated noise. “If you don’t want to help, go ahead and say so. You _are_ a Linnett. I’m sure you don’t want to risk your cushy little life in the Councillor’s house.”

Now it was Valgund’s turn to be annoyed. “How can I say yes or no to anything when you haven’t even asked me?”

“I thought it was obvious what I was proposing.”

“A person likes to be asked properly.” Valgund struggled to put his annoyance into words without seeming pathetic. He fell back on the sort of polite vagueness his parents used with each other: “Otherwise, a person might get the impression that you only value his company as long as he’s useful to you.”

Bors clearly had no patience for vagueness. “You think I’m using you? I thought you wanted to help!”

Valgund had no practice expressing anger. In moral rehab, he had cultivated a slack-jawed equanimity that kept everyone off his back. Now his words came out clipped, ugly: “You _know_ that helping you is risky for me. Yet you refuse to tell me who your allies are—or, really, anything. You also know I’m lonely. Apparently you’ve decided I’ll do pretty much anything for a bit of company.”

Bors stopped short under a towering, ice-bound spruce. “That is _not_ true,” he practically shouted, wheeling to face Valgund. “I didn’t force you to do anything, and _you’re_ the one who looks down on _me._ ”

The explosion caught Valgund off guard. “I—what?”

“You’re so superior, thinking you know everything about these mountains. You’re happy to show off for me, but you think what I’m doing is crazy and doomed, don’t you?”

Valgund took a step back, his own anger quelled by the force of Bors’s resentment. Did the spy really think Valgund thought so little of him? Maybe he had at first, but the man’s peculiarities had grown on him.

“I don’t think that,” he said in a subdued voice. “I can’t even tolerate most people. But you—even when you’re being an ass, which is rather often—”

Bors took a step toward him. “Oh, spare me.”

“No! What I’m trying to say is, even when I’m teasing you, I . . . well, I can more than tolerate you. You make sense to me.”

When Bors closed the distance between them, Valgund’s body braced instinctively for a blow. He was unprepared to be drawn into a clumsy embrace.

Bors’s chilly lips bumped his. They recoiled from each other, Bors’s arms loosening and falling. “ _Idiot_ ,” Bors muttered as if to himself.

Valgund couldn’t let him regret this. He reached out to pull the smaller, shivering man into his arms, bent, and planted a tentative kiss on Bors’s lips.

Again the response caught him off guard. Bors leaned into him with a little moan, his mouth opening warmly under Valgund’s. When Valgund drew back in surprise, Bors followed him. His lips darted in for a kiss that lasted longer and pressed deeper, devouring Valgund’s mouth with unexpected force.

Valgund couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this. There’d been a few brief encounters with men he met on his rounds in the woods, but they were rough types, soldiers or surveyors, and not much for foreplay. The last person he’d properly kissed was Garsha Lindahl, when they were love-sick teenagers in Redda.

The memory brought a rush of tears that counteracted the increasing flood of warmth to his chest and groin. He tugged himself out of Bors’s arms—gently, to make clear he didn’t dislike what they were doing. “We better keep moving.”

Bors gave a little start, as if waking from a dream, and followed Valgund down the trail.

It was more than a mile before either spoke again. Walking briskly under the avenues of snowy pines, Valgund wondered if the thrum of unrequited arousal was keeping Bors warm the way it was him. Going to bed with this man would be like wrestling with a stand of prickly burdock, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“I can’t tell you anything about my allies yet,” Bors said stiffly as they approached the lights of civilization. “It wouldn’t be fair to them until I’ve briefed them on everything I’ve—we’ve—been doing.”

“They don’t know you’re out here?” Valgund wasn’t surprised somehow.

“I’ve been working on my own recognizance. They have their primary goals, and I have mine. But once they know, they’ll help. And they have connections.”

Valgund wondered what sort of people—besides himself—would throw their lot in with Bors. Apparently he would find out.

But he was distracted by the memory of a supple tongue pressing into his mouth. He hadn’t expected such passion in Bors, and he chided himself for pushing the man away before he could plumb the well deeper.

An explanation might not help, but he gave it a try. “It’s been a while for me. Since—well, since I did anything like that. I was in love once, a long time ago, and he died.” _Passed out in my arms. So cold, just like you now. I tried to wake him._ “It hasn’t been easy.”

“I understand,” Bors said in his awkward, formal way. “Well, not really. I haven’t lost anybody like that. But . . . is it true what you said before? You’re lonely?”

Valgund laughed. “You couldn’t tell?”

Bors reached across the trail and clasped Valgund’s hand, his body more eloquent than his words. They walked that way, linked by a firm grip that felt like patience as well as passion, until the trail narrowed again.

When they reached the edge of the villa complex, Bors stopped, as he always did, to let Valgund go on alone. “I can trust you,” he said, phrasing it not quite like a question.

Valgund nodded. “Just assure me this plan of yours isn’t directed against Councillor Gádden in any personal way. I owe him too much.”

“It’s not. And I respect that.”

“I wish you’d tell me what you have against Gersha,” Valgund said, the lateness and the cold unleashing his tongue. “Maybe I could change your mind.”

“Another time.” Bors brought Valgund’s hand to his lips for a fleeting kiss, dropping his eyes bashfully. “I need to brief my friends in Redda. I’ll see you after the solstice.”

And he turned and walked off without a goodbye.

_Such a gentleman,_ Valgund thought with fond irony. Watching Bors’s parka fade into the flying flakes, still feeling the hand in his, he knew this might all come out very badly for both of them. But he needed this in his life—something to look forward to—and he wasn’t ready to let it go just yet.

As for the Sweetbush, well, that would be an interesting challenge. He knew of a lab nearby that kept a fine collection of fungi spores; maybe it was time to pay it a visit.


	10. Tea and Honesty

In the month leading up to the solstice, Ceill Linnett developed a routine. Every fifth- and eighth-day, he went home to one of his parents’ apartments—whichever one’s occupants were less likely to be up late, or home at all. Then he snuck out and found his way to the studio in the Outer Ring, where he spent several hours happily watching the shoot, discussing script notes with Kai, or doing odd jobs.

The crew kept a respectful distance from him at first. But as soon as they realized he was eager to be included, they vied to give the “young Fir” tasks to do. Ceill learned their names, their jobs, their gossip and in-jokes. He marveled at the fierce loyalty that somehow co-existed with their constant sharp-tongued ribbing of one another. It was a far cry from his school, where people paid lip service to friendship even as they clawed their way to the top of the class ranking.

Kai soon stopped insisting on giving Ceill a chaperone, much to Ceill’s relief. He couldn’t believe the Outer Ring had ever unnerved him—or the Brothel, for that matter. After accepting two more of Kai’s invitations to tea, he was starting to feel almost at home there.

After the first time, they met in more modestly decorated rooms than the Red Room—which was in high demand, Einara explained. Ceill worried that Einara might bring up the Northmen. But instead of asking him questions, she told them all stories about how Outers survived day-to-day in the Wastes, to his delight and fascination. Sled dogs, seal blubber, ice shelters—he couldn’t get enough. Even Aleks Snowblind, for all his talk of rejecting the comforts of modern Oslov, had never lived the rugged lifestyle that Einara had.

And so the darkest time of the year, the month that Ceill usually spent counting the hours till school would break for the solstice and he would fly south with his parents, became a time he didn’t want to end. With just two days until vacation, he left the studio with Stefan, headed for a last tea.

Kai had an equipment problem to sort out, so Stefan suggested they go on ahead with a few other cast members who lived in the Brothel. Though the dark was absolute this time of year, stray snowflakes twinkling under the streetlights made the very air seem to shimmer with anticipation.

As they fell behind the others, crossing one of the vast, sterile spaces of the underground city, Stefan said, “Now you’re _my_ chaperone.”

“Hah.” Ceill turned to hide his blush. He was less intimidated by Stefan these days, but he still felt self-conscious alone with the older boy.

“No, seriously. Have you noticed how Kai never lets me go anywhere alone? You watch—when we get to the end of the moving walkway, Brenn and the others’ll be waiting for us.”

Ceill reproved himself for being self-absorbed. He hadn’t noticed any of that. “Why would they wait?”

“Because I’m valuable, and you can’t let valuable things slip away.” As they left the moving walkway, Stefan pointed out the others lingering at the foot of the stairs. “See?”

Ceill had an unsettling sense that there was more to Stefan’s situation than he grasped. By the time he thought of something to say, the others were in earshot again.

Once inside the Brothel’s dim corridors, their companions turned left, while Stefan led Ceill to the right. “Where are they going?” Ceill asked. He wished he could follow—not to leave Stefan, but simply to _see._

On his last two visits, he’d peeked around a few corners when no one was watching him. How could you not be curious? The Brothel was a closed-off world that made him think of a hothouse and a gym and—well, to be perfectly honest, of sex. Of things hidden and forbidden.

“The dorms. They’re less nice than the parts you’ve seen, believe me.” Stefan led the way through a swinging door into an industrial kitchen, full of gleaming equipment and desolate at this hour. “We’re early, so we might as well sneak some ricecakes.”

Ceill had all the ricecakes he wanted at home. But Stefan clearly saw them as a treat, so he ate two politely. “A tour of this place would be so interesting,” he said, too sheepish to come out and ask for one.

“Nah, not missing anything,” Stefan said around a mouthful. “Take it from somebody who only ever leaves this shithole to go to the studio.”

“Are you, uh, not _supposed_ to leave?” The question was out before Ceill could censor it. He knew it might upset Stefan, but he had to know.

Stefan answered easily, though he didn’t meet Ceill’s eyes. “Oh, I can leave, technically. I can visit my folks if I schedule it ahead of time. But I can’t just duck out and traipse around the city like you do. They don’t want me running _away_.”

“Why would you . . .” Ceill stopped, in unmapped territory.

Postings involving sex work were supposed to be strictly voluntary. But he’d heard the unsettling, roundabout ways in which his family referred—when they had to—to Tilrey’s years as a kettle boy. As if it hadn’t been a chosen and honorable posting, but something more akin to his Uncle Valgund’s time in moral rehab.

It was hard to imagine Tilrey under anyone else’s thumb. Titles and expectations aside, he went where he wanted and did what he pleased, and in Ceill’s view, if anyone tended to compromise in their household, it was Gersha.

And yet . . . he’d seen Tilrey make elaborate shows of deference toward Upstarts. A few times, too, he’d seen Councillor Saldegren casually place his hand on Tilrey’s shoulder when he was their dinner guest, provoking worried glances from Gersha. Ceill hadn’t thought much of it, but maybe he should have. Maybe there were parts of this kind of work he didn’t understand, ways he might offend without realizing it.

“I’m sorry,” he amended. “I know it’s none of my business.”

Stefan swallowed the rest of his ricecake and stepped closer. He didn’t seem offended. “You’re adorable when you blush. Do you know that?”

Naturally, Ceill blushed again. Without thinking, he took a step back that brought him up against the bank of stainless steel cabinets. “Thanks. But I really . . . I shouldn’t just barge in and ask questions. I know that.”

“I don’t mind.” Stefan’s eyes were open a little too wide, as if he were trying to show Ceill how earnest he was. “Believe me, I’ve dealt with my share of entitled schoolboys who think they’re doing me an honor by flirting with me. You’re different.”

“I . . .” Did Stefan think Ceill was flirting? He found himself making a confession: “When I first came to the café, I—I wanted to see you. Just like the others.”

Stefan smiled knowingly. “And were you satisfied with what you saw?”

“Oh yes! But now—well, now it’s different. Before, you and Darius were the same in my head. Now you’re a separate person, a real person.”

“Do you like the person I am? Or have I disappointed you?”

Ceill couldn’t speak. The truth was that over the past month he’d stopped fantasizing about Stefan _or_ Darius as he fell in love with the strange, semi-licit, free-yet-not-free lives the streammakers led. But Stefan was still gorgeous. His intense gaze brought Ceill’s blush back in force.

“You could never be disappointing,” he whispered.

“Nor could you. What’s wrong?” Stefan flicked a lock of hair out of Ceill’s eyes. “Will you forgive a lowly whore for looking at you?”

“You’re not—either of those things! Not to me.” The brief contact had ignited Ceill, filling him with a hot surge of desire. He wanted to press his whole body against Stefan’s, but at the same time, something shrank inside him. This was all happening too fast. Stefan was playing another game with him.

“You think I’m just a stupid sheltered kid,” he muttered. “And I am—well, sheltered, anyway.”

“That’s not a bad thing.” Stefan moved toward him again. “And ‘stupid’? Please. You’re so bright I’m not sure what you’re talking about half the time.”

What was _happening_ here? “Um, maybe I just don’t make much sense.”

Stefan was so close now, his soft laugh warm on Ceill’s cheek. “You make a ton of sense to me.”

Then Ceill was in Stefan’s arms, their bodies tight together, a hard cock nudging Ceill’s thigh and waking an answer in his own groin. He lost the power of speech.

When Stefan kissed him, slowly and deliberately, he gasped in helpless abandon. He opened his mouth to the warm, probing tongue. But he didn’t kiss back, because this still felt wrong.

“Tell me if I should stop,” Stefan whispered in his ear.

Ceill stood like a statue, caught in an agony of indecision, while Stefan kissed and nuzzled his neck, murmuring, “So gorgeous. Want you so badly.”

This was exactly what he’d dreamed of, so why did he feel like running away? Was there something wrong with him?

Then Stefan sank to his knees, pushing Ceill back against the cabinets, and reached out in a businesslike way to unzip Ceill’s fly.

And Ceill knew. Not only was this happening too fast, but everything that Stefan was doing was exactly like Darius in the episode they’d been shooting tonight. This was Darius acting the part of an eager lover when he was really just a sad, fed-up whore.

He sidestepped away from Stefan’s reaching hands, his face burning again. “Why are you doing this?”

“I want to. Obviously.” But as Stefan rose to his feet, knees cracking, his mask slipped. For an instant, he looked tired and annoyed. “I thought you wanted it. I thought you were in love with me, or Darius, or whatever.”

_I was._ “Did Kai tell you to?” Ceill blurted out.

“Kai?” Stefan’s annoyed look deepened into something angry. “He’s in charge on set, but he’s not my fucking pimp.”

“I only thought—because you said he was afraid of you running away.”

“He’s doing what Einara tells him to.” Stefan’s features twisted. “She takes orders from the Brothel director, and the rest of us take orders from her. And if you really want to know, yeah, she _did_ tell me to make a move on you tonight.”

Einara had directed this scene? Ceill couldn’t believe it, but he couldn’t find words to deny it, either. “Her?”

Stefan stepped away, drawing himself up proudly. “That’s right. I pointed out you were still underage, but she said you were really into me. I swear I didn’t mean to force myself on you. I thought you—”

“You didn’t. And I’m eighteen in less than a month.” Ceill’s heart was beating wildly now, pumping adrenaline through his body, but it wasn’t Stefan who’d set off the fight-or-flight reflex. “Why,” he asked, keeping his voice level, “did Einara want you to do that? Did she say?”

Stefan looked glum and disgusted—with himself or Ceill, it was hard to say. “She’s always planning and scheming with the director. She probably wants something from you, and she hoped I’d soften you up.” He kicked a steel caddy, sending it skittering across the tiles. “And now I’ve royally screwed up her plan, and you’re probably gonna run home and tattle to your parents, but what-fucking-ever. You’re a nice kid, and you don’t deserve to be used.”

_Used._ The word sent another bolt of electricity through Ceill’s body. Because he was just a kid, but a kid with powerful connections, Kai and Einara thought they could use him.

For a second, he hated himself for being taken in. Then he drew himself up, straightening his back and lifting his chin the way his mother or grandmother would. Like a Linnett.

“I’m not going to run anywhere or tattle to anyone,” he said. “Einara invited me to tea tonight, and I’m having tea with her.”

Stefan opened his mouth. Ceill stopped him with a raised hand. “Just show me where she is. You didn’t screw anything up, and you won’t get blamed. This is between me and her.”

***

Kai’s photos had turned out very nicely. Alone in the staff lounge, Einara spread them across a table cluttered with unwashed soup bowls and tea tumblers.

Physically, Stefan Altmering and Tilrey Bronn had little in common besides the heavy lids and long lashes that gave them both an air of sensual hauteur. But anyone who’d seen the first set of pictures would recognize the second as a skilled homage.

Working together as photographer and model, Kai and Stefan had captured the listless melancholy of the kettle boy gazing out of the room where he was a pampered prisoner. Then, sprawling naked on the bed, Stefan transformed into a creature of pure appetite, as if his lover had entered the room instead of the patron he’d been expecting. Arching his back, his dark eyes glazed, he offered himself to an invisible watcher who was also the viewer.

Oh, yes. These photos pulled you in. They made you want to be part of the story.

She would circulate them to a small set of elite patrons, who would spread them throughout the Sector. Stefan would become an icon for this set, and when he did have to sell himself, it would be on the most favorable terms.

There was no way around that. She had given him a respite, just as she’d promised, but as long as he was in the Brothel, his fate was sealed. Stefan seemed to be losing some of his resistance, at least. When she asked him to seduce Ceill Linnett, he’d barely argued, seeming more concerned about the boy’s welfare than his own.

She got him to agree by assuring him that he could and should seek the young Fir’s consent every step of the way. That hardly seemed like a problem, given the way she’d seen Ceill moon over Stefan during their teas.

The door slid open, and she hastily gathered the photos and slipped them into their envelope. Presciently, as it happened—for there in the doorway stood both of the young men she’d just attempted to set on a path to mutual gratification.

Ceill Linnett’s pale skin was flushed, but not with embarrassment this time. His eyes were narrow with fury.

_What on earth?_ Einara rose, mindful of her composure. “My apologies, young Fir. I wasn’t expecting you yet.” She shot Stefan a cold glance. Why would he bring the boy to this dump? She would never serve a guest tea here.

Stefan glared right back. “The young Fir says he wants to see you alone. So I brought him to you.” Then, before Einara could reply, he turned on his heel and left them.

Well. Apparently the seduction hadn’t gone well. Had she really misread the Linnett boy so drastically?

Trying to salvage something of her plan, she pulled out a chair for Ceill at the rickety table and cleared off the leavings of other people’s meals. “All my apologies, young Fir. This place isn’t worthy to receive you, and I would never have—”

“It’s fine.” The boy’s voice was painfully controlled, almost strangled. He didn’t sit in the chair so much as collapse in it. “I don’t need tea. Please, sit down.”

“The table is a mess, Fir. And we must have tea, of course.” Einara dumped the dishes in the sink and filled the kettle, using the domestic bustle to buy time. Hulda always served tea for difficult negotiations.

Ceill couldn’t seem to wait, though. “You can’t punish Stefan,” he said, wringing his hands, his anguished gaze directed downward. “He didn’t do anything.”

_And that’s precisely the problem._ Einara returned to her seat. If he wanted to be blunt, she could do that, too. “You seem upset, Ceill. With me. Could you explain how I’ve offended you, so I can make amends?”

For a moment, nothing. Then the boy’s head snapped upright, and two blue eyes fixed Einara with a fierceness that startled her. “You don’t want to make amends. You want to use me. And I want to know why. Are you trying to hurt my family?”

His eyes softened on the last word, and he blinked hard. There was that odd shyness again. Einara waited politely, letting the boy fight down his tears—he was so very young. Then she said, “Of course not. How could I possibly hurt your family? I’m nothing and no one.”

“You still give people orders.” Ceill swallowed. “I have eyes. I could see Stefan was pretending with me just now, and I’ve seen the way he and Kai look at you. Like they’re waiting to be told what to do.”

So he wasn’t as naïve as she’d thought. Maybe he even had some of his father’s political cunning.

The kettle was whistling; Einara removed it from the hot plate and looked around for some halfway passable tea leaves. “I’d hoped we could be friends,” she said.

Ceill made an ugly, incredulous sound. “Just _stop_ it. Stop pretending. Why would any of you want to be friends with me?”

He was feeling sorry for himself, was he? “You did come to us first,” Einara pointed out calmly, pouring the tea. “As to why anyone should seek your friendship, well, no one can deny you’re an extraordinary young man.”

The boy grimaced as if her words physically hurt him. “Ever since I came, you’ve been _luring_ me. I can see it now.”

She set a cup before him. “You make me sound sinister.”

The steam intensified the crimson of Ceill’s cheeks. “Look,” he said, “we both know you could get me in trouble if you wanted. I’m not supposed to be here, or in the studio, or any of it. My parents wouldn’t be happy. So, what do you want?”

A nice, direct question. It seemed wrong not to give it a direct answer. “Tilrey Bronn,” Einara said, taking her seat. “Your father’s secretary. I want a meeting with him.”

“With Tilrey?” The boy looked stunned. “That’s all? Why don’t you just ask him, then?”

Einara couldn’t explain that Tilrey’s shirker associates wouldn’t let her near him. The boy probably didn’t know that Tilrey was a shirker—or that Tilrey was his father, for that matter.

“It isn’t easy for a person like me to get an audience with a Councillor’s secretary,” she said, trying to sound weary and unthreatening. “Whores aren’t expected to leave the Brothel—and yes, I am only a whore like the rest. I have some power over the staff here, but only within the bounds set by the director. When she says no, her word is law.”

She hoped to appeal to the boy’s sensitivity with this show of weakness, but Ceill looked skeptical. “Why do you want to meet with Tilrey, anyway?”

What could she tell him? Over the years, there’d been so many reasons. According to Hulda, Tilrey somehow knew about Colonel Thibault’s plan to use Harbourers posing as Outers to infiltrate the city. Without being aware of Einara’s existence, he was the one who had inadvertently put Irin on her trail, forcing her to kill him.

Later, the photos had given Tilrey a face and a past, transmuting her murderous rage at him into a burning curiosity. She’d listened with fascination to every tidbit Bors could tell her about him. Until, at last, she learned they had something in common: an intimate connection to the dead Malsha Linnett.

She couldn’t tell Ceill the truth. _I want to know more about your great-grandfather. I want to rip his memory apart with my bare hands. I want to know what would hurt his family the most._

So she chose a different avenue. What was the Harbourer proverb? _Two birds with one stone_. “With his Thurskein connections, Bronn must know Aleks Snowblind. I was hoping he could give me an introduction.”

“You want to meet _Aleks_?” The boy looked startled and relieved at once. “Why?”

Einara reached for a safe answer. “Our director wants to do business with the Free Northmen.”

“Tilrey would never help you with that.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because he hates the Northmen. Thinks they’re troublemakers.” The boy raised the cup to his lips. “But I could.”

“You could help?” She didn’t hide her surprise. “I thought you only met Aleks Snowblind the one time.”

“Not exactly.” A quick, guilty smile. “If you give me a message, I could pass it to him over the solstice break.”

“You would do that for me?” Remembering her long-ago, abortive attempt to solicit the Northmen’s help, Einara was touched.

Granted, the boy had no idea what he was offering. Aleks might or might not want to join forces with her, and at this point, there was nothing she could do with the Verses short of sabotaging Oslov out of spite. But wasn’t satisfying her spite better than nothing?

“All I said is I’ll pass him a message,” Ceill said. “Aleks doesn’t take orders from anybody, especially me. If he doesn’t want anything to do with you, he’ll say so.”

“It’s more than enough. Thank you.” Einara closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them. “Please tell him . . . that the girl from the greenhouse in the Outer Ring still wishes to speak with him. The first time she tried, she was betrayed, but she comes from the Wastes and still wishes to sing a song of his fire and bravery.”

Whether Ceill was tight with the Northmen or not, she didn’t quite trust him not to report her for treason. So she would have to hope cryptic hints piqued Aleks’s interest.

Ceill frowned, but he repeated the message verbatim. “Okay. I’ll tell him.”

“Thank you,” Einara repeated. And then, because she didn’t and never would trust anyone to give her something for nothing: “Ceill, I didn’t bring you here to ‘use’ you. I truly hoped we could be of service to each other. In my job, I collect knowledge. There are things I know that might help you.”

“Like what?”

“Things,” she said, deliberately vague. “The secrets your parents talk about when they think you can’t hear them.”

Ceill’s eyes turned to ice. “You know who my father is?”

_So much for that._ Disappointment washed over Einara, but she couldn’t help admiring the simple way he’d said it. Maybe the boy did have some nerve. “Yes.”

“You’re not the first to figure it out, believe me.” He grimaced. “Apparently it’s plain from my face. Sometimes I think I should go around wearing a sign on my forehead that says _Yes, I am a misbirth; please don’t ask me about it._ ”

Did he dislike his father? That would explain why he didn’t want to set up a meeting between them. “It must be hard to resemble a famous person,” she said, trying to sound sympathetic. “A person with a certain fame, anyway.”

“Tell me about it.” A brief shiver ran over the boy. Then he drank the last of his tea and stood up. “I should get back before they look for me.”

Einara rose with him. “Will you come back here after the new year? Whatever Aleks says?”

She let her voice go a little reedy, a little plaintive. Let him think she was weak. “I’m sorry about Stefan. It was a crude tactic, but such things often work on people with less self-control than you clearly have.”

If Ceill was flattered by this, he didn’t let on. “You should say sorry _to_ Stefan,” he said. “He didn’t like doing it. He’s worried you’ll punish him. You won’t, will you?”

“Of course not.” _As long as he keeps being useful and relatively compliant_. “I’ve never punished him. He’s not a child.”

“I’ve seen how Kai watches him. Like you’re both afraid he’ll run away.”

He was observant. “Stefan won’t suffer any consequences from what happened tonight. I promise you.” She held out her hand. “Shall we say happy solstice, then?”

After a moment, Ceill clasped it. “Happy solstice. May you find the light that hides in the dark.”

It was a standard Oslov winter pleasantry, but Einara liked the sound of it. “You too, young Fir. Be well until the new year.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May you all find the light that hides in the dark, readers, 'cause green knows we need it right now! <3 <3 I'll be back with more before the solstice, if all goes well.


	11. Amateurs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I call this one The Sex Chapter. Not that there won't be any more sex in the story, but this is most of it. Probably. ;)
> 
> CW for brief mention of underage and a very brief flashback to gang rape.

“I need your help,” Stefan said. It was nearly four a.m., after a long night shoot, and he and Kai had snuck into the sauna that was supposed to be reserved for Brothel patrons.

Kai groaned and scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “Look, Hulda’s taking bids for you right now. I can’t stop her. It _is_ a Brothel. You knew why we were doing that photoshoot.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Einara must not have told Kai that she’d already handed Stefan his very first assignment—to seduce Ceill Linnett—and that he’d botched it. He was grateful for her discretion, at least.

“I’m ready to do the job,” he said, keeping his eyes on the cedar bench and off Kai. “It’s just—I’m not sure I’m _ready_. I might freeze up, and there are some patrons who wouldn’t mind but others who would. I need to try it with someone safe.”

“Oh.” In that one word, Stefan heard Kai’s understanding, and his shoulders unknotted. At least he wouldn’t have to spell out that he still sometimes woke up thrashing because his body remembered being chained to a dentist’s chair.

“What do you want me to do?” Kai asked after a moment, gentler. “And are you sure it should be me?”

Stefan’s laugh was a touch bitter. “You’ve seen me naked. You order me around every day, and I snipe at you every day, and we haven’t killed each other yet. You’re as safe as they come.”

“I’m flattered, but are you sure it wouldn’t . . . you know? Make everything weird?”

“Everything’s already weird. Everything’s actually terminally fucked up here.”

“I know, but.” Before Stefan knew what was happening, Kai slid over to him on the bench and raised his chin, forcing Stefan to meet his green eyes. “I don’t want to be just one more asshole who fucked you.”

“Oh, you’ll be an asshole either way.” Stefan tried to flash a cocky grin, but Kai’s eyes were so serious. So he _was_ going to have to spell things out a bit.

“I’m not worried about just getting fucked,” he admitted. “Or giving head. Those are easy. But if anyone wants to make me come with their fingers or cock inside me—it might be hard. Or to, uh, get on top and stuff. I . . .” Greening hells, he hadn’t wanted to admit any of this. “I mean, they probably wouldn’t want that, right?”

The seriousness vanished, and a devilish light appeared in Kai’s eyes. “You’ve never fucked anybody, have you? You’re nothing like Darius. You’re a fucking virgin!”

“I never said . . .” Stefan swallowed his pride. “Yeah,” he said irritably. “I don’t know how to make it work, exactly.”

Kai released his chin and just barely brushed damp fingertips across Stefan’s knee. His voice shifted into a new register, low and seductive. “What luck. It so happens I’m _very_ good at being fucked, and I’ve coached more than one shy virgin in my day.”

“Fuck you.”

Kai chuckled, reaching out to sweep a lock of hair out of Stefan’s eyes and tuck it behind his ear. “That’s the idea.”

“You would let me, seriously?” Kai was so much bigger than Stefan. It was hard to imagine doing that to him, though every inch of the well-muscled body was currently communicating the message _Come and take me._

Stefan tried to ignore the heat pooling in his groin. He’d been thinking they could fool around a little, nothing more. “Einara wouldn’t mind?”

“Nah. We both still entertain patrons now and then. You’re not a patron, but she’ll understand.” Kai’s busy fingers crept down Stefan’s arm, giving him goose pimples despite the crushing heat. “Part of the job. And you know, we both _want_ you to feel okay about it. Confident. In control.”

Stefan didn’t feel remotely in control at this second, but it was the good kind of loss of control. The dizzy, fun kind.

Nothing like those days in the dentist’s office when the bastards would go off for hours at a time and leave him shackled to the chair, spread-eagled and half-clothed or naked under a carelessly draped blanket or parka. And all he could do was wait for them to return and hurt him again until he wasn’t sure which was worse: the hurting or the waiting.

He shuddered, closing his eyes. He reached out for Kai—whose body he knew, whose body was large and coarse and prone to overeating and drunkenness and cavernous belches but would never, ever hurt him.

“I want that, too,” he said. “To be confident. Will you show me?”

***

“I can’t do this,” Stefan said.

Clad in a robe, his hair still damp, he held up the bundle of clothing Einara had just handed to him: a slate-blue, yellow-piped schoolboy’s uniform, complete with the badge of his old kellthavina. He thrust it at her. “I know I said I would, but it’s too fucking _much_.”

Einara took the uniform and shook it out. They stood together on the plush carpet of one of the suites decked out like R-11 apartments, newly vacuumed and ventilated and evocatively lit and ready for a Councillor to enjoy his pleasure.

Fir Councillor Lindthardt was due in fifteen minutes, and he had made the highest bid for Stefan’s favors. It wouldn’t do to keep him waiting.

“I thought you might react this way,” she said. Once Stefan had learned the name of his inaugural patron, it had taken three days for her and Kai, working together and separately, to persuade him to oblige Lindthardt at all. That was why Einara had waited to show him the costume Lindthardt had requested, which added insult to injury.

She understood, even sympathized. Lindthardt was indirectly responsible for Stefan’s presence here and the trauma that had preceded it. He had worked in concert with Lindahl, with or without meaning to, to overturn the boy’s life.

But Stefan had a new life now, and considerable public adulation, and a thicker skin—or so she’d done her best to convince him. The sooner he relinquished his foolish high-Laborer pride, the happier he would be. With her approval, Kai had worked on the boy’s physical responses, helping him turn his body into an ally. But the brain remained a problem.

“The man isn’t going to gloat over you,” she said now. “I know Lindthardt—he’s not cruel. He has simple needs, like most of them. If you show up and wear that and lie still, your job will be nearly done.”

Stefan threw himself down on the windowseat. “I’m not going to indulge his disgusting fantasies. Just ’cause I played underage on the stream doesn’t mean I’ll play it for him.”

These Reddans were so _pampered._ Einara sat down opposite him. “How old do you think I was when I started doing this kind of work?”

“Too young, probably. But I don’t see how that’s rel—”

“Fifteen.” She held him severely with her eyes. “I developed a hard shell as soon as I could. You will, too. Stop holding this ridiculous grudge against Lindthardt—he’s not your peer. You can’t fight him. Give him what he wants, exploit him for all he’s worth, and when you’re in bed with him, tuck your true self away.”

Stefan’s face remained stormy, dark brows drawn tight together. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re pimping me to him.”

“Yes. But we all reap the benefits. Haven’t I told you everything Lindthardt bid for the first crack at you?”

Stefan winced at the phrase. But he must know the value of what Lindthardt had offered: not just the usual bribe of sap vials, but special consideration on the Appropriations and Diversions committees, of which the man was a member.

The Brothel had a respectable annual appropriation from the Sector, but not a lavish one. Lindthardt’s special patronage could benefit them all, from the lowliest kitchen worker or “mouth” up to Hulda herself. With his help, ricecakes would be eaten, beer drunk, and necessary renovations to the staff dorms made ahead of schedule. If Einara had her way, they might even install a tiny greenhouse to grow their own produce, improving all their diets.

Lindthardt’s influence on the Diversions Committee might end up padding the budget of Kai’s streams, too, and giving him more leeway with the censors. From the conspiratorial whispers she’d been overhearing, Einara knew Stefan and Kai were planning something for which they might well need a powerful Councillor’s protection.

All the boy had to do was swallow his pride, and dozens of his fellow Laborers—more than a hundred, counting the Brothel staff and everyone who worked on _Their Ways Parted_ —would reap the benefits.

She chose her words carefully. “You’re an actor, Stefan. A good one. And this is a role.”

The boy shuddered, but the fight had gone out of him. “I hate that prick. I just keep thinking of his smug face.”

“Don’t think of it. Don’t think at all.” She rose again, leaving the uniform on the seat beside him. “Lindthardt wants Darius. So when you’re with him, be Darius. Laugh in his face. Mock him even as you yield to him. He’ll love you for it.”

After a long moment, Stefan reached for the uniform. He shook it out and held it at arm’s length—the daily wear of a boy who hadn’t yet been Notified. A reminder of the days when he’d hoped for something different for himself.

“ _I_ won’t love me,” he said glumly. “I’ll hate myself.”

“Only for a bit.” Einara straightened her smock; it was time for her to go to the main foyer and receive Fir Councillor Lindthardt. “Soon you won’t feel anything at all.”

***

Objectively, Stefan knew the uniform fit like a glove. It must have been tailored to the same specifications as his stream costumes. But it pinched, making him feel like a kid who could still be lectured for returning to the dorm after curfew. He was glad there were no mirrors.

Waiting for Einara to return, he felt stupid standing, but where could he sit? The plush sofa, the armchair, the windowseat, the bed—no, definitely not the bed. Anyway, if he sat down, he’d have to jump up when the Councillor came in. No fucking way.

He paced, hands behind his back, trying to ignore the steamy warmth and the faint cedar odor from the woodwork and the stuff they sprayed on the linens. An unmistakable Brothel smell. This might look like a Councillor’s bedroom ( _like Lindahl’s bedroom_ ), but the whole place was one big illusion.

And not just this place. Whybergism was a mirage, being Raised was a mirage, and he’d fallen for it.

The door opened. Stefan stood frozen to the spot, his heart thudding despite everything Kai had taught him about control. He watched as Einara bowed her head and ushered two men into the room.

_Two_?

No. A man and a boy. Behind beaming, florid, paunchy Councillor Lindthardt trailed a furtive-looking kid in a jerkin. His dark hair and brows matched the Councillor’s, but he seemed as sheepish as Lindthardt was confident.

“Aha.” Catching sight of Stefan, the Councillor stopped short and gave him a once-over that made Stefan grateful for the mood lighting that hid his burning cheeks.

“He’s just as stunning in person, isn’t he?” Lindthardt nudged the boy out from behind him. “And that uniform . . .” He shook his head. “What a gorgeous touch.”

Stefan felt his mouth twist. No one had said anything about _two_. He was going to kill Einara, but it wouldn’t help to panic. “Good evening, Fira,” he said in the scornful voice of Darius.

The boy was staring at Stefan, all parted lips and glowing eyes. He looked scared and hungry at once.

“Go ahead,” Lindthardt said. “Introduce yourself.” When the boy just kept staring, he told Stefan, “This tongue-tied fool is my son, Ludovic Akeina.”

From the doorway, Einara said, “Fir Councillor Lindthardt has generously obtained your services for his son’s eighteenth birthday. Young Fir Akeina is an enthusiast of _Their Ways Parted._ ”

Lindthardt chuckled. “Look at the poor boy. He thought he might have to satisfy us both. Go on, Ludo. Tell him he’s your gift and yours alone.”

Understanding at last, Stefan went limp with relief. Lindthardt must not have informed Einara until now that he was bidding for his son and not himself.

The kid looked mortified by his dad’s behavior. “How do you do,” he said.

“How do you do, young Fir.” Finally Stefan remembered to bow his head. No doubt Lindthardt would return another night for his own pleasure, but tonight Stefan was spared. “I’m honored, Fir,” he muttered in Lindthardt’s direction.

“As you should be.” Lindthardt gave his son a hearty slap on the back. “Go on, Ludo. Have fun; take the whole night if you want. Kurnik will have the car waiting when you’re ready to come home.”

In the doorway, the Councillor turned to wink at the boy. “Not a word to your mother. And I don’t want to hear any more whining and moaning about your study regimen, you hear?”

“I hear.”

“Not even a thank you?” Lindthardt grinned to show Einara it was all in good fun. “He’s been talking about this for days. Kids his age!”

“Thanks, Dad,” the boy gritted out as the door closed behind the other two, leaving him and Stefan alone.

Stefan was still lightheaded with relief. If only Einara had known ahead of time, she could have saved herself a lot of trouble by telling him all he had to do was seduce one snot-nosed boy.

And, judging by the heated way the boy was gawking at him, he would be more successful than he’d been with Ceill Linnett. “So, you like our stream, young Fir?” he asked, keeping things formal.

The boy’s adam’s apple bobbed. With his dad out of the room, he seemed less constrained. “Is it true you used to go to my school?” he asked.

Stefan touched the badge on his uniform, and the boy nodded.

“Yeah, I did, Fir.” He dropped the formality and went for a full Darius voice, drawling and cheeky. “Does that turn you on? If I was a year younger, I could’ve had the desk next to yours, huh? Maybe I even had better marks than you. And now look at me, ready to do whatever you want. Bet that gets you real hard.”

The boy licked his lips. Then he said as if he’d practiced it, “Go. Lie on the bed.”

So it was going to be that way. The boy was flexing the muscles of power, learning to command his inferiors. Stefan obeyed, but he took his time, stretching out on the bed with Darius’s indolent grace. “Don’t you want me to undress first, young Fir?”

_Every time I submit to a patron, my whole body is saying_ fuck you. _Every time,_ Kai had told him when they started shooting the scenes with Darius in the Brothel. Stefan hadn’t understood that, had faked it, but now maybe he did understand.

The boy stayed in the shadows beside the bed. With his eyes on Stefan, he reached under his jerkin and began working himself through his trousers, getting himself hard.

_Green hells, such an amateur. Could he be a virgin?_ Stefan wondered why he’d dreaded this night. Even Lindthardt was only a blowhard, posturing and pathetic in his son’s eyes.

Kai and Einara were right. Whatever Strutters thought they could do to him, he would always be one step ahead of them. Always in control.

He half-lidded his eyes and beckoned. “C’mere, sweetheart. Why aren’t you letting me take care of that?”

They ended up entangled on the bed, Stefan naked and the boy half so. The boy was an eager kisser but sloppy, and he seemed hesitant to get to what Stefan had assumed would be the main event. Rubbing his whole body against Stefan’s, he craned up to whisper in his ear: “Could you, uh, touch me?”

“But I am. Oh. You mean there?” The boy was rolling off Stefan and turning over, transferring Stefan’s hand to his ass. “Sure. Just relax.” Stefan eased the boy’s trousers down, remembering everything he’d learned from two sessions with Kai. “You want my finger inside you?”

The boy responded with a wet moan that clearly meant yes. He was hiding his face in the pillow, but the cheek Stefan could see was beet-red. “Like you did with Markus in the threesome scene,” he whispered. “It was so hot. Please.”

_That wasn’t me. It was Darius._ Then Stefan remembered what else happened in the threesome scene—Darius screwed both his friends in quick succession.

He reached for the lube and gave the boy what he wanted, slow and easy, stroking young Akeina’s hair and shoulders with his free hand to soothe the nerves. After several minutes of that, and urgent whispers of “Yes, please” and “More,” he bent to ask, “Do you want me to go further? Like Darius did with Markus?”

The boy grimaced and nodded fervently at once. “Could you . . . you know? Make it so it doesn’t hurt?”

“Sure thing.” Stefan bent to kiss the boy’s shoulder, feeling very glad indeed that he had asked for Kai’s tutelage on this point. “Is it your first time, young Fir?”

A reluctant nod.

“I’m so very honored you would choose me.”

The boy’s laugh was strangled. “Course I chose you. You have to do what I say, and you can’t blab to anybody about what I let you do—anybody who matters, anyway.”

Stefan’s smile tightened. He’d known boys like this Ludo at school, so constipated and status conscious that they practically made you fill out a form before you went down on them. “What you _asked_ me to do,” he pointed out.

“What?”

“Not ‘let me.’ You requested this. And, as you pointed out yourself, I have to do it.” He was torn between wanting to slap the little prick and feeling sorry for him. “Admit it. Ask me again, and be clear. Ask me to fuck you.”

Ludo’s breathing got heavier. Luckily, he seemed to find this turnabout a turn-on. “I have to ask?”

Stefan squeezed his eyes shut and did his best to summon some arousal. “Yeah.”

“Please fuck me.” The schoolboy’s voice was husky.

The coupling that ensued was a little slapdash and awkward. Stefan was still a novice, and Ludo squirmed and complained several times, but in the end, they made it work.

He was relieved when the boy snuggled into his arms afterward, looking smug and sleepy, and said, “Please stop calling me ‘young Fir.’ It’s Ludo.”

“Fine.” Stefan kissed the boy’s dark eyebrow. “That was great, Ludo.” It was like falling back into a groove; he’d spent so much of his school career flattering and teasing and sweet-talking his high-named classmates.

“Don’t talk like a whore,” Ludo said sharply. Then, as if in apology, he rubbed his head against Stefan’s chest. “I mean, I want you to be like Darius, that’s all, like before. Kind of mean.”

Stefan nipped Ludo’s ear. “That I can do.”

“They’re all going to explode with jealousy when I tell them I had you.”

“Your schoolmates?” He wondered what kind of censored version Ludo would tell.

Ludo seemed to consider. “I mean, not that I’ll necessarily tell them. My dad says to be discreet, because the more people know about you, the more power they have over you. But I might tell my closest friends.”

_Spare me from schoolboy politics_. In Darius’s half-mocking way, Stefan said, “You have loads of friends, I suppose.”

“Oh, I do.” If Ludo noticed the sarcasm, he gave no sign. “There’s only one I really want to tell, though. And he _isn’t_ my friend.”

“No?” Already bored, Stefan nuzzled the boy’s armpit. Why did every teenager think they’d invented drama? “Why are you so eager to tell this not-friend? Do you want to make him miserable, or just . . . interested?”

Ludo continued as if he were talking to himself: “I won’t tell him. I shouldn’t. Only, if I did, he wouldn’t tell anybody else. There isn’t anybody for him to tell. And he’d be so embarrassed and wouldn’t know what to say. He’d get so red.” A devilish smile curved his lips. “I’d like to see that.”

Stefan propped himself on an elbow. “I’m starting to think you’re not a very nice person, young Fir Ludo,” he said, tousling the boy’s hair. “What’s this not-friend done to you? Has he beaten you in the class ranking? Cheated off one of your tests?”

“He just annoys me.”

“See what I mean? It’s not very nice to be annoyed at people for no reason.” Stefan pursed his lips, playing the scold. “I’m guessing he’s either a very hot boy who ignores you, or a boy who’s an easy target. And it can’t be the second one, because then you wouldn’t want to impress him. Anyway, you aren’t cruel enough to make fun of your inferiors. Are you?”

He sat up and crept his fingers up the Upstart’s bare chest, almost tickling him. If Ludo came away feeling even the slightest bit less secure in his superiority to everyone, this whole night might have been worth it.

The boy scowled. “Nobody _ignores_ me.”

“No? So you don’t have a desperate crush on this not-friend? You’re not hoping that being with me will make you more attractive to him?”

Ludo sat up, too, shaking Stefan off. “That’s _not_ true.”

Stefan sighed, remembering how touchy Ceill Linnett had been. These high names . . . “You asked for Darius,” he said. “And Darius—well, he calls everybody on their bullshit. He’s kind of a jerk.”

After a moment, the boy’s body relaxed. “ _I’m_ the Darius,” he said. “Like you said, I have loads of friends. No one I liked would ever not like me. This boy just annoys me because . . . he’s fake. _He’s_ the bullshitter. He acts like he’s special, when really there are all these rumors that he’s a disgusting misbirth and the son of a kettle boy. My dad even thinks so!”

The last part was spoken with such vitriol that Stefan felt for the object of Ludo’s apparent obsession. “There are worse things to be than the son of a whore, in my personal opinion,” he said. “Anyway, if that’s true, it’s not his fault.”

“It would be okay if he was friendly.” Ludo’s frown deepened. “Humble. But he’s not! He really thinks he’s better than we are.”

“Hey.” Stefan edged closer again and touched the boy’s shoulder. “This not-friend winds you up. I can see that. But you’re here to unwind, and the night is young. D’you want to make some more memories to tell your friends about?”


	12. Fathers and Sons

Aleks Thulver hated the sound of his father’s voice. It resonated with pure authority, honed by decades of speeches in the Council. It was self-important, the accent perfectly correct according to Reddan standards. Worst of all, it was always disappointed.

There was a time when he’d thrilled to that voice, eager to make it sound pleased and proud and loving. But that was long ago, before he realized that his mother could only ever be a plaything to his father. Before he became Aleks Snowblind.

“Well?” Mal Sollentaal asked. “Do you want it?”

Aleks took the tiny voicetrap that Mal held out to him. “You can go now,” he said, knowing Mal could hear his irritation and doubly irritated by it.

Besides being the Lieutenant Supervisor of Thurskein’s Sector Six, Mal had a history as a covert Int/Sec agent, which was why Niko Karishkov used him as the channel for his occasional messages to his son. Aleks, who knew perfectly well that Mal’s ultimate allegiance was to the True Hearth, didn’t enjoy looking vulnerable in front of him. The two of them had helped each other out on various occasions, but it didn’t mean they liked each other.

Mal withdrew through the half-open garage door with a shrug, clearly eager to get out of the cold. “Later, friend.”

Aleks turned to his circle of friends. “You lot can go, too.”

They were in the smokehole off the basement Maintenance level of Sector Six: a burrow hollowed from snow and ice, just large enough to stand up in. The fire pit in the center, over which six more Northmen were busy warming their hands, cast flickering orange light on rough walls of packed snow. The solstice festivities were done for the night. Above them, Aleks could feel the weight of the vast edifice of the city, wrapped in post-curfew silence.

_His_ city. His only home. His curse. A prison that might never open and release its inmates, or not in his lifetime.

“Go and close that behind you,” he repeated, waving his friends toward the garage door. “I’m sick of your ugly mugs. Everybody out but Lasha.”

The Northmen grumbled good-naturedly and obeyed, not because they obeyed all Aleks’s orders without question—far from it—but because they didn’t want their late-night smoke ruined by his bad temper.

Only big, copper-haired Lasha remained. He moved over and snuggled up to Aleks, slipping an arm around his waist and tousling his hair. “You’re so tense.”

Free of the others’ scrutiny, Aleks relaxed into his lover’s arms. “It’s been a whole year,” he said into Lasha’s neck. “I bet he’s got nothing new to say.”

“Just get it over with.” Lasha reached over Aleks’s shoulder and picked up the voicetrap Mal had brought. As the recording began to play, he kneaded the knots in Aleks’s back. “Remember I’m here.”

Static. A low, ambient hum. Then the dignified voice of Councillor Niko Karishkov unfurled into the cold air: “Lesta, my lad. I hope you’ve passed a good year since we last spoke.”

_You’re the one speaking. I don’t get to talk back._ Aleks tensed while Lasha kept kneading his deltoids, whispering, “Shhhh.”

“I hope you’re starting to reconsider this play-acting you’re doing. I’m sure it’s flattering to be treated like a leader, but consider the class of people who follow you—layabouts, shirkers, and a passel of elderly religious fanatics. I know you have a scoundrelly, actorish streak in you, Lesta—so did I when I was young. I took pleasure in pretending; it’s why I worked undercover. Without that, I never would have met your mother.” A pause, and then the wistfulness disappeared, replaced by a darker note: “But you’re in your thirties now, and you’re better than this. Smarter. You have _merit._ We both know it.”

Aleks growled softly against Lasha’s throat.

The Councillor continued, settling into an imperious drone: “I also hope you’ve considered what I proposed last time. If you distance yourself from these hoodlums and marry a high-testing woman, I’ll be only too happy to find postings for you and your wife in Redda. Blood will out, Lesta. With my help, your own children could still be Raised. And you owe that to them, don’t you?”

An indrawn breath made Aleks realize he was crushing Lasha’s hand. He released it, murmuring an apology.

From here, the Councillor launched into a helpful (though doubtlessly incomplete) recap of Int/Sec’s investigations of the Northmen’s activities over the past year. He scolded Aleks for taking part in forbidden expeditions into the Wastes, begged him to stop, and finished by giving him a code word to use in case he was caught in the act again and arrested.

Lasha laughed, rubbing his jaw against Aleks’s cheek. He was nearly eleven days into a new growth of beard; soon the Constables would call him out for the wardrobe violation, force him to shave, and give him the usual slap on the wrist. And he would grow the coppery beard all over again—bristles slowly lengthening to silk, regular as clockwork.

“Your dad’s such a gift to us,” he said. “Wonder if he even realizes it.”

“Shush. Of course he does.” Aleks filed the code word away for future reference. But now his father’s recorded voice was going down a path he hadn’t expected:

“By the way, it’s come to my attention that you’ve been seen socializing with my colleague Gádden’s adolescent son.” A small, angry throat clearing. “Lesta, you must stop that at once. I can’t explain why—it’s politics—but if you corrupt that brat, you could hurt not only me but yourself.”

“Ooh.” Lasha nipped Aleks’s ear. “You’re corrupting children now, you rogue.”

“I beg you, just for once, to listen to me.” There it was, the old familiar disappointment, edged with impatience and self-pity. “And please, give your mother my regards. Tell her I still think of her every day with the greatest respect and affection, whatever she says. She and I must walk different paths, of course. Goodbye, dear Lesta. I pray I won’t see you in a detention cell this year, or ever.”

The recording ended. Aleks released a long breath.

Lasha giggled, trying to pull Aleks into his lap. “The old man has his own way of expressing affection, doesn’t he?”

Not ready to be distracted, Aleks tugged himself free and poked at the embers in the pit, trying to nurse a last flame. “Fuck him.”

“Don’t let it bother you, love. It’s the same thing every year.” Lasha took the stick away from Aleks and effortlessly built up the fire. “You know, maybe we should get on this wife business. He’ll change his tone if you send him pictures of a bouncing baby or two. Gretel or Brodda would jump at the chance to bear your heirs.”

“I won’t live a fucking lie.”

“Sparks of Living Light, what a bear you are. It wouldn’t be that bad. You don’t have to move to Redda just because he says so.” Lasha lit his pipe in the flame and took a long drag. “Anyway, soon there won’t be a Redda, or a Government Sector, or a Council. The True Hearth will tell the people the truth about the world out there, and then everybody will move south to live soft lives of laziness and luxury. Everybody but us.” He nudged Aleks and passed him the pipe. “I hope to live to see the day when the north belongs to us.”

“I hope to live to see the day,” Aleks repeated, but the prayer was leaden in his mouth.

He had taught Lasha and the others to believe in a glorious day of deliverance. The True Hearth had been smuggling Skeinshaka off to live in their secret Harbour settlement for decades. Sooner or later, the government would discover the plot and pounce, and the Hearth would strike back—with some sort of strategic attack on Harbourer supply routes, Aleks suspected. If the Northmen only bided their time, the Republic and the rebels would destroy each other, leaving Oslov’s ancestral lands to the true believers.

But what if the government crushed the Hearth? Or what if the mutual destruction was cataclysmic? Or what if, given a chance to run off to Harbour, the Northmen decided they didn’t actually love the north so much after all? They were getting soft, sitting here waiting and occasionally sending out a pointless expedition to search for the Sanctioned Sweetbush.

Meanwhile, the True Hearth had built an entire city of rebels in Harbour, if his sources were correct, and was busy using them to infiltrate Bettevy and surround the Oslov embassy. It was a risky plan, perhaps a stupid plan, but at least they were _doing_ something.

“I don’t want a wife,” he said fretfully, then took a drag on the pipe. “I want you.”

“You have me.” Lasha pressed his barrel chest against Aleks’s more slender frame. “No worries there.”

Above them, the garage door rumbled open. Aleks looked up to see Bers standing in the doorway. “What’s going on?” he asked, knowing his friend never bothered him without good cause.

“Sorry to interrupt, but there’s another visitor.” Above his flourishing brown beard, Bers’s eyes were narrow with contempt. “It’s that Strutter boy, the Admin’s kid, come to bug you. Shall I tell him to get lost?”

It took Aleks’s brain a few seconds to put things together. Then he laughed. _Speak of the owl demon._ “You mean Ceill Linnett? No, no, don’t tell him to get lost. Send him in right now.”

He had no idea why his father had warned him against “socializing” with Councillor Gádden’s son, but it gave him a pleasant thrill to know he was disappointing the man yet again.

***

Ceill had drunk way too much raspberry wine at his birthday party, and he still felt a little giddy as he made his way down to Maintenance level.

He was wearing his secret scarf, the one he usually hid in his closet because it was patched all over with the brilliant skeins of yarn that Aleks had gifted him over the years. He tried to be polite to the big, brown-bearded Northman on guard duty outside the smokehole. But the man stared right through him before grunting, “Wait here.”

Seeking out Aleks always made Ceill nervous, both because he was afraid of being seen and because the other Northmen hadn’t warmed up to him. According to Aleks, anyone could be a Free Northman, regardless of where they’d been born in the “soulless Whybergian system.” But his followers clearly saw things differently.

Ceill sidled over to a group of Northmen who were playing dice on a storage locker. He tried to observe their game: _Just another friend of Aleks. Don’t mind me._ But when they saw him, they froze in place, forcing him to step out of earshot.

He hadn’t asked to be a Strutter. He wasn’t even a genuine high name. If they only knew . . .

The guard returned from under the half-open garage door and crooked a finger. “This way.”

As Ceill ducked under the door into the near-darkness of the smokehole, he couldn’t help noting the absence of _Fir._ Unlike his streamer friends, the Northmen prided themselves on not using honorifics.

His eyes adjusting to the faint radiance of the fire pit, he found Aleks sitting on one side and big, bearish Lasha on the other. As usual, Lasha was bearded while Aleks’s nearly bare cheeks shone in the firelight. The Northmen’s leader couldn’t afford to get in regular trouble, he’d explained once to Ceill, so he kept himself clean-shaven, more or less.

At least Lasha was always friendly. He jumped up and caught Ceill in a hug that left him breathless. “Look at this one! Old enough to grow a beard now, I’ll wager!”

Aleks chuckled from the dark. “His family would love that. Sit down, Ceillsha. Happy birthday—it is your birthday, isn’t it?”

Ceill’s nervousness melted away. He sat on the packed snow between them, glad he’d worn his parka, while the guard slammed down the garage door from the other side. “I’m eighteen today. My granny finally let me have more than a finger of raspberry wine.”

Lasha clapped him on the back. “A lot more, from the smell of you.”

“And I got this!” Ceill tugged his favorite gift from his parka, unable to resist showing it off to his friends the way he already had to his family. He was surprised when both men recoiled at the sight of the boxy camera, no bigger than his fist.

“That’s not _on_ , is it?” Lasha hissed. “Turn it off.”

“Please turn it off,” Aleks said.

“Of course it’s not on. And it doesn’t take video, just stills.” The camera was a present from Uncle Valgund, who was authorized to requisition photographic equipment to help him catalog his specimens.

At the streamers’ studio, Ceill had gotten used to seeing and handling cameras. Now he recalled guiltily that most Laborers knew them only as the eyes of the government. “I’m sorry,” he said, stowing his prize away. “I won’t take any pictures in Thurskein, promise. I got it for—well, to play around with. In Redda.”

Both men relaxed visibly when the camera disappeared. “You aren’t planning an Int/Sec career, are you, my lad?” Aleks asked with strained humor.

“No!” Ceill wished he could explain the sort of power a camera would give him—the power to document his world. But where to start? “It’s just for fun. To make a record of the things I see.” _The highs and lows of the city. Councillors’ homes and the Restaurant and then the Outer Ring and the Brothel._

“‘Make a record’?” Lasha gave a low whistle. “You’re grown up, all right, lad. Sound like your ma ordering her staff around.”

Ceill gave him a good-natured shove. “I do not.”

Lasha shoved back. “Do so. Want a drag?”

As always when Ceill first arrived, Lasha played the host while Aleks stayed slightly aloof. He sat silently while Lasha relit the pipe and passed it to Ceill, and Ceill inhaled the fragrance that made him think of pressing his face to a hoary pine trunk.

Then Aleks said, “You’re an adult today, Ceill. Tell us everything that’s happened since we last saw you.”

This demand was part of their ritual, too. Normally, Ceill struggled to come up with something to say. What did Aleks Snowblind care about his test scores or his dorm politics? Now, though, he finally had some excitement in his life, and he had two people to whom he could safely divulge it—people who would never dream of saying a word to his mother, fathers, or grandmother.

“I’m consorting with streammakers and whores,” he said, looking straight at Aleks. “My parents don’t know a thing about it.”

They stared back, genuinely surprised. “For real?” Lasha asked.

“For real.”

Aleks laughed delightedly. “I knew you’d find your way to the wrong side of Redda eventually. Tell us everything.”

Ceill did, more or less. He downplayed his obsession with _Their Ways Parted_ and Darius, which embarrassed him now, and he played up his determination to improve the streammakers’ portrayal of Thurskein.

“They listened to you?” Aleks said wonderingly.

“Of course they did. He’s a Councillor’s kid, right?”

Ceill reddened. “They made fun of me at first, but I think I convinced them. I can’t believe how little they knew, for Laborers!”

Both Northmen nodded. “They keep us ignorant and disdainful of each other, Reddans and Skeinshaka,” Aleks said. “It’s part of their strategy.”

They’d seen _Their Ways Parted_ , too, or at least Lasha had; he asked all kinds of questions. “What about the lad who plays Darius? Is he as hot as he looks on-screen?” The big man elbowed Aleks in the ribs. “Don’t get jealous, now, sweetheart! He’s just my sobstream boyfriend!”

Stefan was still a bit of a sore spot for Ceill, but at least it was too dark for the Northmen to see him blush. “They keep him in the Brothel,” he said stiffly, “and I don’t think he wants to be there. It’s an example of the systemic exploitation you’re always talking about.”

“Treating people like things, yeah. Like currency.” Aleks perked up. “You haven’t been inside the Brothel, have you?”

“Actually . . .” Ceill trailed off. He’d been so excited to tell them about Einara—until that last teatime when everything changed.

Einara might look like a Feudal princess and hail from the Wastes, but she was part of the system that imprisoned Stefan. And she knew Ceill’s own secret, which made her dangerous.

Looking back on that strange confrontation in the dingy room, he wasn’t even sure why he’d offered to carry her message to Aleks. He’d thought he was doing something clever, leading Einara away from his tiresome father toward his revolutionary friend, but maybe he was still just under her spell.

He’d promised her, though. And Aleks was no fool; Ceill should let him judge the message for himself.

“Actually,” he said, “that’s one reason I came here today. I met someone in the Brothel who knows all about you, Aleks, and she wants to meet you. She wouldn’t tell me why, and of course I told her you don’t meet with just anybody, but . . . she gave me a message.”

He recited the words that he’d scrupulously memorized as he walked back from the Brothel that night: “‘The girl from the greenhouse in the Outer Ring still wishes to speak with you. The first time she tried, she was betrayed, but she comes from the Wastes and still wishes to sing a song of your fire and bravery.’”

When he finished, Aleks stared into space. Lasha chuckled to fill the silence: “Sounds like this Brothel girl might be in love with you, Aleksha. Or at least a fan?”

Aleks’s eyes were watching smoke waft toward the distant chimney hole. “How old is she?” he asked. “This ‘girl’? How does she look?”

“Older than you. Younger than my mom. Tall, blond with blue eyes. Beautiful.” Ceill blushed again. “Her name’s Einara, and she was born an Outer.”

“That sounds right, but it was so long ago—ten or fifteen years.” Aleks turned to Lasha. “Do you remember? Szaralund was dealing with the Brothel in the Greenhouse back then. She told me the Brothel director paid her a bonus to help her entrap an Outer girl, one of her whores, who was trying to contact us.”

Lasha nodded. “The girl was desperate to join up. She gave Szara a batshit speech about bringing Redda to its knees. Szara felt bad about handing her over, but the girl seemed pretty crazy. And we got enough crazy in our ranks as it is.” He gave his lover another playful nudge, trying to make him smile.

Aleks was impervious. “Did she seem ‘crazy’ to you, Ceill?”

Ceill supposed madness could take many forms, but he shook his head. “I’ve never heard her talk about rebellion or anything like that. She’s always calm, and she knows about living on the Wastes. I think . . . you might actually like her. But,” he added quickly, “I wouldn’t trust her necessarily. She knows more than she should, and she tried to trick me. And they say that when the Brothel director dies—soon—she’ll take over the job.” He’d gathered long ago that the Northmen traded with the Brothel, offering smuggled Harbourer goods in exchange for sap vials. “So maybe she just wants to deal directly with you.”

“Unless Hulda Dartán dies or designates her as the rep, we can’t do that,” Lasha said. “Wouldn’t be good business, right?”

Again Aleks ignored him, gazing at the far-off circle of black sky. “I’ll meet with her,” he said.

Then, as they both stared at him: “January twentieth, I can be in Redda in the evening, say eight. Do you know a good place, Ceill? Somewhere neutral, outside the Brothel?”

Ceill’s heart thudded. This was really going to happen, and he’d set it up. He was responsible. “There’s a café where they all go in the Outer Ring. It has a private back room.”

“Sweetheart.” Lasha was caressing Aleks’s arm and shoulder, trying to get his attention. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“I’m not sure at all.”

“Then why? This girl, this woman, she’s obviously trying some sort of power play. She tried to mess with a Councillor’s son, for green’s sake.” Lasha glanced at Ceill for confirmation. “That’s plain stupid.”

“Why stupid? Is it stupid for Ceill to be friendly with us, or for us to be friendly with him?”

“No! I mean, that’s different.” Lasha seemed really unsettled. “You’re our _friend,_ Ceillsha. We’ve known you since you were a snot-nosed kid, and you know us. This Einara, it sounds like she wants to take advantage of you. I’d steer clear.”

_He’s right_ , a voice inside Ceill whispered, even as he tensed irritably at the warning. “I’m not worried about that. I can take care of myself.”

“That’s one of the things I’ll ask Einara when I meet her,” Aleks said calmly. “What precisely she wants with my friend Ceill.”

Blood rushed to Ceill’s face again. “Please don’t.”

“Afraid I’ll embarrass you?” Aleks grinned at last, then disentangled himself from Lasha and reached over to tousle Ceill’s hair. “I won’t. When Lasha and I were your age, we were already sneaking out of ’Skein and risking our lives in the wild. If you want to do dangerous stuff, I’m not the one who’s gonna scold you.”

“He’s a kid,” Lasha protested.

Aleks shook his head. “Don’t baby him, Lasha. Not our way.” And then, to Ceill: “You’re my friend, though, so of course I’m gonna find out what this Einara wants with you. I want to know what she wants with me, too. I’m curious.”

“Harbourers have a proverb about curiosity,” Lasha said. “They say it kills—what does it kill? Forest cats, I think. The small ones that climb trees.”

“Well, I’m not a forest cat. I can afford a little curiosity. And I’m bored.”

The two men faced off—Lasha pleading, Aleks with a bright, calm blankness that repelled all questions. Ceill was familiar with that expression; Einara shut people out in the exact same way.

No, he had no worries about Aleks’s ability to deal with her.

Aleks rose, and they followed him. “I have a birthday present for you, too,” he said. “Someone’ll deliver it tomorrow. Will you tell Einara my answer?”

“January the twentieth. Twenty hundred hours.”

Aleks clapped him on the back. “Happy birthday, my friend. Bers will see you out.”

_I made it happen. They’re going to meet._ Ceill was in such a haze of nervous excitement that he barely noticed the guard’s rudeness this time. He climbed out of Maintenance on shaky legs and waited for the Northman sentry at the top of the stairs to open the door. Then he strolled into the bright hallway like he wasn’t coming from anywhere in particular—and practically walked into the arms of his father.

Tilrey. That father. He had a book under his arm and was smiling pleasantly. “I thought I might find you here, Ceillsha.”

Ceill’s heart took a terrible leap and wedged itself in his throat. But he’d been perfecting his innocent face. Trying to be as calm as Aleks, he said in a disaffected way, “Vlen and his friends like to hang out in Maintenance and get hammered on homebrewed mead. It’s kind of gross.”

“I have no doubt.” Tilrey beckoned. “Walk with me.”

When Tilrey had that dry tone, you didn’t argue. Ceill followed him—not to the lift that would whisk them up to their rooms, but to the concrete stairwell in the west corner of the sector. “You want to _walk_ up?” he asked incredulously.

Tilrey paused on the first step. “I know who you were seeing down there,” he said.

_Shit, shit, shit._ Ceill wanted to sink through the floor. Could Mal have ratted him out? Years ago, his mom’s boyfriend had tried to use him to spy on Aleks, but surely Mal wouldn’t have snitched after all this time.

It didn’t matter. Tilrey had all kinds of sneaky ways of knowing things. “Does Mom know?” Ceill asked with trepidation.

Tilrey shook his head. Like Aleks and Einara, he’d perfected a composure that was profoundly frustrating. “I don’t see any point in upsetting your mother or Gersha.” He turned and climbed the stairs, measured step by measured step, as if nothing had happened.

Ceill caught up on the landing. “I was only talking,” he babbled. “With Aleks’s lieutenant, Lasha. I’ve known him for years, ever since that fitness competition, and he’s kind to me like an uncle and wanted to say happy birthday. I’ve never left the city with them or anything like that. Nothing illegal. I never will.”

He broke off, out of breath. It was all true, wasn’t it? As far as it went.

Tilrey just looked at him. Then he began walking again, a little more slowly, so Ceill could easily stay abreast of him. “I want to tell you a story. About when I was your age.”

Chills trickled down Ceill’s spine. If there was one thing Tilrey didn’t talk about, it was his past. Was he in real trouble this time?

But his father didn’t sound angry, just distant. “When I was your age, I had two friends I loved deeply.”

“Dal and Pers.” Ceill knew this part from Auntie Dal. “You were inseparable. Dal was the ringleader and bossed you both around. They were both in love with you.”

“What Dal probably didn’t tell you was that she was a budding rebel at that age.” Tilrey reached the next landing and kept climbing, facing straight ahead. “The two of us heard about a meeting of disgruntled workers. She dared me to go, so I did. At the meeting, they asked if anyone could translate a Harbourer transmission. I couldn’t resist showing off. I volunteered.”

Ceill had a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this story, for all his curiosity. “The Northmen aren’t shirkers. It’s different.”

Tilrey ignored him. “One meeting. To impress a friend. I never went back. Never did a single thing more for them. Never even really understood or shared their goals. But there was an informant at the meeting, and the informant made a list of names. And when Int/Sec decided it was time to sweep the rotten elements out of our sector, I was rounded up and cuffed and put in a cell.”

No, Ceill didn’t want to know about this. He didn’t want to point out the obvious, either, but what else could he do? “That wouldn’t happen to me.”

“That’s exactly what I thought.” Tilrey’s tone was smooth and even. “The whole reason I went to the meeting in Dal’s place was that Dal was nobody, whereas I was the son of the Lieutenant Supervisor. Safe, I thought.”

“It’s not the same.” Was Tilrey going to force Ceill to spell out the difference between them?

Tilrey halted and turned sharply to face his son. “What’s not the same, Ceill? Yes, your father is a Councillor. Yes, your mother is a Linnett. But have you forgotten what happened to your Uncle Valgund?”

Heat flooded Ceill’s face. He’d never thought of it that way. “Uncle Valgund was disturbed. He needed help. Treatment.”

“Is that what your mother told you?” Tilrey’s blue eyes, so like Ceill’s own, locked mercilessly on him. Then they flicked upward—checking for cameras, Ceill realized. When they returned to him, he flinched.

Tilrey wasn’t done. “What Valgund and his friend did was desperate and unhinged, yeah. But it was also a deliberate act of rebellion, just like those beards your friends insist on wearing.”

“That’s totally not the same!” How could you equate running off into the Wastes with growing a beard? The Northmen also made a habit of escaping into the Wastes, yes, but they did it rationally, with proper supplies.

“Not the same, but close enough.” Tilrey lowered his voice. “When social stability depends on total compliance, no act of rebellion is too small for punishment.”

_Rebellion._ Did that word actually apply to anything Ceill was doing? It seemed so unfair. “Wardrobe violations aren’t real crimes,” he said, suddenly very aware of his colorful scarf, which he hadn’t had time to hide from Tilrey. And then—feeling a little desperate— “I would never, ever translate a transmission from Harbour! I know that’s treason! You didn’t know, because you were a Skeinsha and no one taught you. But we’re not the same!”

Tilrey’s eyes narrowed, and Ceill realized he’d inadvertently insulted his father. “You couldn’t help it,” he rushed on, trying to repair the mistake. “And what happened after that—well, I don’t know exactly what happened, but I know it was wrong. I know about, about—” He turned his eyes down. “You and the Linnett family.”

When Ceill was eleven, he’d asked his mom why she kept him apart from his only living grandfather. She told him that two generations of men in her family had done “unacceptable things” to Tilrey. Later, he learned bits and pieces about his great-grandfather. “I know my great-grandfather was an evil man. I mean, obviously—he was exiled! For corruption! Everybody agrees he was bad. So,” he finished awkwardly, “whatever happened because you went to that meeting, it wasn’t your fault.”

When Ceill dared to look up again, Tilrey was still gazing at him. “Your great-grandfather wasn’t exiled for corruption,” he said.

“But Mom said—”

“No. He didn’t do anything to me that he hadn’t been doing for decades. It wasn’t something anyone punished him for because it wasn’t considered wrong. If _I_ was irrational enough not to appreciate the advantages of my new position, if I had to be forced to do my duty, that wasn’t his fault, was it?”

Tilrey’s voice was so cold, so almost cruel, that Ceill lost the will to argue. Something great and terrible stood between them, and the vapors that wafted off it sent shivers down his spine.

“Gersha knew it was wrong,” he said in a small voice.

“Gersha. Yes, bless his heart.” Tilrey’s expression softened, then hardened again. “But if you asked any of your high-named friends’ fathers, I don’t think they would see much wrong with your great-grandfather’s behavior toward me. A little excessive or sloppy or regrettable, maybe. But not _wrong_. This is our reality, Ceill. Mine and yours.”

Ceill thought of Ludo Akeina’s father. They’d only met once, but he hadn’t liked the man’s sidelong, speculative glance at him. Whatever his great-grandfather had done, he could imagine Councillor Lindthardt signing off on it.

Then he remembered that _he_ had his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s blood running through his veins. What if he wasn’t actually a good person, down deep where it mattered?

He didn’t want to be like Ludo Akeina. He didn’t want to be locked up the way Tilrey and even Uncle Valgund had been. Those couldn’t be the only choices.

He ducked his head. “I won’t go down to Maintenance again. I won’t see them again. I promise.” For a moment he actually believed what he was saying.

Tilrey seemed more skeptical. “My mother went nearly a decade without seeing me,” he said in that same dry, frigid way. “A decade, because I was too ashamed to look her in the eye. How do you think _your_ mother would feel, Ceill?”

“That’s not going to happen to me.”

Tilrey didn’t blink. “How do you think Gersha would feel?”

_What about you?_ But maybe Tilrey thought Ceill didn’t care enough about him to reckon him into the equation.

That stung, worse than anything he’d already said. Tears rose to Ceill’s eyes; he blinked them away. “I already promised,” he said, hating his father.

Had Tilrey never considered how it felt to be him? How awkward and confusing his life was, caught between two worlds? Gersha understood that. Gersha wouldn’t have stared at him in this cold, horrible way. He wouldn’t have tried to use Ceill’s love for his family against him.

“I appreciate your promise. I hope it sticks.” And with that, Tilrey turned and continued up the stairs without a backward look.

Left alone, Ceill drew a deep breath. He slumped against the wall of the stairwell and wiped his eyes, shuddering. He understood now how Tilrey could face down Councillors as if he were one of them. Sometimes he seemed to have a lump of ice for a heart.

Did he even care why Ceill liked spending time with Aleks and Lasha? Gersha would have asked him about it. Gersha would have wanted to know.

And that was why Tilrey had come to Ceill directly, without involving Gersha. It all made perfect, nasty sense. Gersha would have spoken up for Ceill and his good intentions, taking his side—within reason, of course. But now Ceill couldn’t tell Gersha any of this without feeling responsible for giving him new things to worry about. Tilrey had made sure of that.

Ceill uncrossed the fingers he’d mentally crossed when he made his promise. He would just have to be more careful next time.

***

Far below them, in the smokehole under the city, Lasha said, “ _That’s_ why you want to meet her? What the hell are the Verses?”

“A story my mother says my father told her, a long time ago.” Aleks knew he wasn’t going to convince Lasha to relinquish his misgivings. Not tonight. “It was just a legend, he said. Just an entertaining story, in which our computer systems—the ones that run our entire world—were made with a flaw built in, a secret vulnerability. A password taken from the verses of a famous Harbourer poem.”

Lasha looked hopelessly confused. “A password?”

“It’s called a backdoor. A key to everything.” Most of the Northmen were happy to be ignorant about technology, but Aleks believed in knowing your enemy. He’d learned valuable lessons from a few kids who’d worked out how to hack into the city’s infrastructure.

“I’ve never heard that story. Even if it’s true, why would an Outer girl know about it?”

“Why indeed.” Aleks took a drag on the pipe.

“It sounds like a coincidence. Like nothing.”

“Maybe so.” Aleks relaxed into his lover’s arms. Lasha was a solid worker, a loyal friend, a homebody. Now that he was in his thirties, he wanted to build things that would last. He didn’t seem to understand why Aleks was still plagued by the restless, itching need for action.

What had his father called him? _Scoundrelly._ He might as well live up to that.

“Well,” he said, “it can’t hurt to find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be a short chapter, but then I wanted to explore Aleks's POV, and then I got the idea of bringing Tilrey into it, and it just kept going and going. :)
> 
> If Tilrey seems unnecessarily harsh here—well, it is Ceill's perspective we're getting. In the next story, we'll return to Tilrey's POV and learn more about what's been motivating him.
> 
> Happy belated solstice, everybody! And happy whatever else you celebrate! I should be back before the new year. <3


	13. Razor's Edge

“How do you know you really found the Sanctioned Sweetbush?” Kai asked. “Couldn’t he have shown you any random government installation?”

Bors shook his head impatiently. He’d waited to visit the Brothel until the end of the winter break, when he knew the place would be less busy. Now he was here, though, he was burning to make plans and take action. “The place is isolated in the mountains for a reason, and my photos show rows of what look like trees. Anyway, my informant wouldn’t lie.”

“Your informant is an Upstart, correct?” Einara reached over his shoulder to freshen his tea. Unlike Kai, she had simply listened to his news, expressing neither skepticism nor excitement.

“Yeah, but an Upstart with a history of anti-government resentment.” Bors hadn’t used Valgund’s name; he didn’t want them doing anything foolish that could compromise his friend. Anyway, he’d done the legwork on this, and it was their turn to defer to him. “He’s a trained botanist. I trust his knowledge. He can source the fungi, and I believe he could inject the trees, if we can just figure out a way to get inside that guarded enclosure.”

Kai looked worried. “I know you’re hot on this plan, Bors. But what will it accomplish exactly, other than screwing up the sap trade and pissing off every Strutter with a habit?” He turned to Einara as if asking her to do his arguing for him. “If Strutters stop giving us sap, we won’t have anything to trade for Harbourer luxury goods in the Outer Ring. Right?”

“I think Bors is looking at the bigger picture.” Einara gazed past Kai, ignoring his appeal. “Stopping the flow of sap is disruptive. Disruption creates opportunity.”

“Yeah, but who says we could even do it?” Kai turned to Bors again. “I mean, did you recruit a bunch of henchmen while you were traipsing around in the woods? Or is it just you and your Strutter buddy? Because, in case you hadn’t noticed, Einara and I can’t leave the city.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that!” Bors kept his eyes on Einara; she was his best chance of getting this done. “There’s hired muscle in the Outer Ring, isn’t there? Men who can be bought.”

“Hired muscle is all well and good until it starts wagging its tongue.”

“We would screen them. Make sure they have something to lose.” Bors’s eyes flashed as he imagined how he’d weed out snitches. These days he wasn’t afraid of detention or even exile for himself—what did he have to live for?—but he couldn’t let anyone hurt Kai. Or Valgund, for that matter—the man had been through enough.

“That still sounds risky. Are you sure—”

“Of course!” Bors seized Kai’s hand.

He couldn’t quarrel with Kai and Einara’s bond—it made Kai happy—but it was shrinking Kai’s horizons. These days, his friend seemed perfectly happy to live in the Brothel and craft vapid entertainment for the masses. Last time Bors visited, Kai had bored him with a detailed fantasy in which he married Einara and they ran the Brothel together, exploiting their own kind to cater to Upstarts’ depraved tastes—or so Bors saw it, anyway.

“You know why I’ve been working on this for so many years, right?” he asked. “For you—for people like you.”

Kai wouldn’t look at him. “That’s ancient history, Bors. I’m not sweet-drowned anymore.”

“But there are so many others.” Bors was tripping over his words. “All over the city, every day, young people get sucked into addiction.”

“Because they’re bored. Or self-destructive. Or they lack willpower. The drug isn’t the problem.”

“But it is! When we use sap as our currency, we set up the very cash economy that Whyberg despised.”

“‘Cash economy’? What even is that? Dumb it down for me, please.”

Einara’s voice cut through the squabble. “The Northmen are also looking for the Sanctioned Sweetbush. Do I have that right?”

Kai looked at Bors, who said, “Yeah, we’ve seen them in the woods. They want it for the same reason, more or less.”

“Good. Now we have a bargaining chip with them. And we can draw on their manpower instead of hiring mercenaries.” She widened her eyes at Bors’s surprise. “I have a meeting scheduled for the twentieth with Aleks Snowblind.”

“You—what?”

“It’s true,” Kai said.

Words deserted Bors. Had all the years locked up in this place finally robbed Einara of her sanity? “When were you going to tell me this?” he managed.

“When I needed to.”

“Are you sure this meeting’s real?” He looked from one to the other, daring them to lie to him. “Not another trap? Who set it up?”

Einara said, “We don’t divulge our valuable contacts any more than you divulge yours, Fir Dartán.”

Bors glared at her, then at Kai. “You’ll need my help. I’ve been following the Northmen’s activities for years.”

“And I’ve been listening closely to you for years.” Einara rose with her usual dignity, as if she were wearing a voluminous skirt or robe instead of a fleece. She seemed a touch smug. “Your offer of help is appreciated, but I’m prepared for this, Bors. We’ll speak again after the meeting, when I hope to have good news for you about the Sweetbush. I like your plan.” She inclined her head almost as if she were his superior. “It’s bold, and we should all be bold. Kai will see you out—unless you have other business with him, of course.”

With that, she swept out of the room. Bors had no choice but to follow Kai.

As he left the room, his eyes caught on the neatly made bed, and he winced. He and Kai hadn’t had “other business” in years now. When Kai’s interest had started to seem perfunctory, pride had forced Bors to reject his friend’s overtures. He didn’t want to be another patron, someone who had to be indulged and flattered. He wanted to be an ally.

Then he remembered kissing Valgund, just the two of them in the freezing woods, and blood rushed to his face. He hoped when they met again, Valgund wouldn’t have thought better of it—the sabotage plan, more kissing, everything.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me sooner,” he complained, following Kai down the halls from the patrons’ area into the staff quarters. “This meeting could be dangerous.”

Kai didn’t look happy, either. But all he said was “And _you’re_ being so cautious? Honestly, Bors, sometimes I don’t recognize you.”

Bors’s throat tightened. _I did it for you. All of it._ But that wasn’t entirely true anymore. Kai never had much interest in ideas, and Bors’s head was full of them.

He wondered if he dared tell Valgund more of his specific ideas about how the Republic could be improved. Remembering how they’d parted made him blush again—not with shame, but with mingled anticipation and nerves. Would Valgund be willing to collaborate with the Northmen? He had to be.

Outside the kitchen, they found the redheaded Brothel steward behaving in a bizarre fashion. He’d paused with his chest out and was preening, hands on hips, as if he expected someone to notice or care.

Bors jumped backward when he saw a blond youth standing across the hall from the steward, a camera aimed straight at them both. How would a Brothel staffer get a camera? What if he ended up in the picture?

The boy was too occupied with his shot to notice the visitor’s reaction. “A little to the left,” he said, gesturing to the steward. “Into the light.”

“He looks ridiculous.” This came from a dark-haired boy who lounged in the kitchen doorway, apparently watching the process.

“I just need him to be more natural.”

Bors wanted to grab the brat’s camera and smash it, but that would draw too much attention. He settled for saying in his most lordly voice, “Aim that thing somewhere else, lad, if you don’t mind”—only to break off as the blond boy lowered the camera and revealed his face.

It was Tilrey Bronn.

Bors stood rooted to the spot, unable to do more than stare at the high forehead and cheekbones, the square jaw, the heavy-lidded blue eyes, the lips that had kissed his and then curled in cruel mockery.

The boy didn’t flash a nasty grin at Bors, the way Tilrey would have. He looked perplexed and a little worried, as if he didn’t want to be caught here, either. “I’m sorry, Fir. I didn’t think.”

“Never mind, Bors,” Kai said impatiently, standing with arms crossed at the end of the hallway. “Just one of our display shoots.”

“Of the steward?” That was when Bors came to his senses and remembered that Tilrey Bronn was forty-seven years old like him and Kai. Even great beauties had a few wrinkles by that age.

“Be more careful next time,” he said in a scathing tone and kept walking.

His brain was working, though, and he was far from letting it go. When they were out in the loading dock with the door sealed behind them, he rounded on Kai.

“That’s the Linnett boy, isn’t it?” He didn’t give Kai time to deny it. “Why’s the Linnett boy here?”

Kai didn’t look surprised; he knew Bors’s business was to know things. “He’s part of our fan club of Strutter schoolboys. He comes to watch the shoots, and he’s actually helpful. Sometimes we bring him back here for tea.”

Bors advanced on Kai. “You and Einara aren’t stupid enough to invite a random Strutter kid to the Brothel. You know that boy is Tilrey Bronn’s misborn son, because I told you.”

Kai’s eyelids fluttered nervously. “What if he is?”

“That’s another thing you should have told me at the start.” Damn Einara’s secretiveness. “She has a plan for him, and I want to know what.”

Vera Linnett worked in Thurskein. Her son must spend time there. Could he be the connection to Aleks Snowblind? It seemed unlikely, given his lofty family connections, but adolescents were certainly drawn to the Northmen.

Kai spread his hands in a helpless way. “I can’t tell you. You know that.”

“Seriously, Kai?” Bors leaned in and made his voice a whiplash. “I respect Einara’s judgment—usually—but you must know inviting that boy here is risky. At _least_ as risky as what we just discussed.”

A muscle flexed in Kai’s jaw. “The less you know, the safer you are, Bors. I suggest you go home and start praying Einara can get you what you want.”

***

“Who was that guy?” Ceill asked, scrolling through the shots he’d taken. He wanted to capture Ansha’s vanity and bravado without making him look stupid, but Ansha insisted on trying to pose.

“Dunno,” Stefan said. “He acted like an asshole”—Ceill had learned that “asshole” was Brothel slang for “patron”—“but he was using the service entrance.”

Ansha said, “Old school chum of Kai’s. He’s Int/Sec, so it’s good business to invite him for tea.”

_Int/Sec_ sent a chill down Ceill’s spine, but the other two didn’t look concerned. Maybe they would have if the Int/Sec agent had stared at them like they were his worst enemy. “He didn’t like me. I could tell.”

“Maybe you look like somebody he doesn’t like,” the steward said in a pointed way. Ceill wanted to ask for an explanation, but Stefan was already leading them into the kitchen.

“I’m famished.” Stefan grabbed a whole packet of ricecakes and hopped onto one of the prep counters. He winked in response to a murderous glare from the cook, who was trying to marshal his small staff for the evening meal. “What? I need sustenance for this evening.”

He offered Ceill a ricecake. Ceill shook his head. The Brothel’s food stores were off limits to staff outside meal hours, and he worried about getting Stefan in trouble. The Brothel had as many stupid rules as Ceill’s school, but at least he could leave school for breaks and free-nights. Stefan was stuck here.

Ansha grabbed the ricecake. “It’s okay, kid,” he told Ceill through a mouthful. “This one’s our shiniest Jewel now, and Jewels get what they want.”

Ceill knew by now what a Jewel was. He just didn’t like to think about what it meant Stefan was doing tonight and every night. Trying to seem as blasé as they did, he listened in a haze of embarrassment as Stefan and Ansha chatted about some new script pages that Kai had shared with them.

“He made it too emo,” Stefan said. “We don’t want people sympathizing with the bastard. We want people to hate him.”

Ansha shook his head. “You weren’t there,” he said through another mouthful. “Everything in that scene happened exactly that way in real life. Kai just wrote it down for me. Poor Risha really did cry like a baby and throw the cushions off the couch and break dishes after his nephew died. ”

“Poor Risha!” Stefan said derisively.

“What, Councillors aren’t allowed to have feelings? He cared more about the poor kid than he let on. It took me hours to calm him down.”

Stefan shook his head, disgust distorting his beautiful features. “If you’re still sweet on Lindahl, no wonder the scene’s a sobfest.”

“Did I say I was sweet on him?”

“You’re always going on about how hot he used to be.”

“He was good-looking for a Councillor.” Ansha looked wistful. “In that noble way they sometimes have. He’s old now, so you wouldn’t know.”

“Noble? Fuckin’ please!”

The steward reached for another ricecake. “He _was_. Didn’t stop him from being an asshole.”

As one, they glanced at Ceill and fell silent. Blushing to the tips of his ears, Ceill reached for a ricecake. “Are you talking about Councillor Lindahl?” he asked, eager to find some common ground. “He’s, uh, in my dad’s coalition in the Council.”

Their faces showed him this was the exact wrong thing to say. “I won’t repeat anything I hear here to anyone,” he said quickly. “Of course not.”

“Better not, young Fir,” Stefan said.

Ceill flinched at the tone. He’d thought he and Stefan were friends, having smoothed over the awkwardness from before break. But maybe Stefan was still just following Einara’s orders.

“I would get in so much trouble if anyone knew I was here, ever,” he reminded them both in his humblest voice. “But I’m just wondering . . . why is Lindahl in the stream now?”

Stefan and Ansha exchanged glances. “It’s a character based on him,” Stefan said. “Different name. No one will know.”

“ _He’ll_ know.” Ansha’s grin was cold. “Lindahl will, I mean, and he’ll wish he never met us. Because we three—Kai, Stefan, and me—we know him inside out. We know all the things he’s done in his life that don’t fit his pure, virtuous image.”

Councillor Lindahl had never been a dinner guest of Gersha or Vera, so Ceill knew little about him, image or reality. But when he thought of what Tilrey had said about his dead great-grandfather, he went cold inside. “Is Lindahl . . . corrupt?”

Stefan laughed as if he were drunk. “That’s one word for it.”

“Tell him,” Ansha said.

Stefan wheeled to look at Ceill, dead serious now. “He won’t get it,” he told Ansha. “He’ll think it was my fault.”

Ceill remembered what Tilrey had said about Malsha Linnett: _If I had to be forced to do my duty, that wasn’t his fault, was it?_ People with power could change the facts to suit themselves.

“I won’t think that,” he said, hating that Stefan could think even for a second he would. “I swear.”

“He means it,” Ansha said. “Tell him.”

Stefan looked doubtful, but he said, “Fine. When I was your age, all I wanted in life was to be Raised . . .”

The story was short but not easy to hear. Ceill was equally shocked by the deal Councillor Lindahl had made with Stefan and the careless way he’d failed to follow through, casting Stefan aside like a used rag. There was a point when he wanted to suggest that Stefan might be misunderstanding something, because Councillors didn’t compromise their sacred trust that way. But he remembered Tilrey’s lecture and held his tongue.

Not all Councillors—not all people—were like Gersha. Aleks had already tried to teach Ceill that, but maybe Ceill hadn’t wanted to know.

When Councillor Lindthardt—Ludo’s dad—entered the story, Ceill’s breath caught. Then Stefan described matter-of-factly how the two Constables had shackled him to a dentist’s chair, and Ceill buried his face in his hands and contemplated the linoleum in helpless dread. He could see and hear the whole scene in his mind—the dingy room, the men with their grating voices and greedy hands.

How could you go through something like that and still be as confident and outspoken as Stefan was? A single lewd glance or cutting remark from Ludo was enough to make Ceill want to hide for days. He was starting to think he was a very weak person.

Mercifully, Stefan cut short his description. “So when they were done, they brought me here, courtesy of Lindahl, to rot in a golden cage. The end.”

“The kid’s trembling.” There was a note of spite in Ansha’s voice. “Didn’t know these things could happen, did you, young Fir?”

Ceill tried to push the images away, but he couldn’t forget Tilrey’s words: _I had to be forced to do my duty._ “That’s a _crime_ ,” he said in a small voice. “You could bring a complaint against the Councillor.”

Stefan sighed. Ansha said, “A Councillor’s word against a whore’s?”

“And what Constables are going to arrest Lindahl? The same ones he has in his pocket?”

Ceill bowed his head.

“There ought to be a way,” he said, unable to look at Stefan. “If I told my father, maybe . . . maybe he could help you.”

Stefan slid down from the counter and tossed the empty wrapper in the trash. “Nah,” he said too casually. “I’m okay now. Like Ansha says, I’m the shiniest Jewel. I get what I want. Anyway, if your dad knew you’d been here, you’d be in deep shit.”

“My dad’s not like the others.” How could he explain Gersha to people who didn’t trust any Upstarts—with reason? “He wouldn’t blame you, and he wouldn’t side with Lindahl. I know that.”

“Strutters always side with Strutters,” Stefan said.

“Not him!”

“The kid’s right,” Ansha said. “Fir Gádden’s different. Because of Tilrey.”

Taken aback, Ceill swung around to face the steward. “You know Tilrey?”

Ansha’s eyes glittered knowingly. “Know him? We were tight. We were kettle boys at the same time, see.” He turned to Stefan. “Regular pair of lovebirds, Tilrey and Fir Councillor Gádden. Always whispering to each other, touching each other, shutting other people out. They’re like that even now, from what I hear, though Rishka is Fir Councillor’s secretary now and not his piece.” His eyes flashed. “At least _some_ Strutters know how to reward a lad for years of loyal service.”

Ceill had never in his life heard Gersha refer to Tilrey as a “lad” or a “boy,” let alone a “piece.” But he’d always known their relationship was unconventional. “So, you see what I mean,” he said. “My father—Gersha—he isn’t prejudiced like that. He gives everyone a fair hearing.”

Ansha still had an unpleasantly canny look. “Uh-huh. Your dad let his Drudge lover help raise you, didn’t he, young Fir? Treated him like a regular member of the household? Didn’t your mother mind?”

“She—no!” That was none of Ansha’s business, but Ansha seemed way too well informed. Could Einara have told him Ceill’s secret?

Stefan said, “Tilrey. Tilrey is the boy in the photos, isn’t he?” He looked triumphant, like he’d just figured something out.

Ansha nodded. And they both turned to look at Ceill, who wanted to sink through the floor. Did _everybody_ know about those hateful photos?

In the next ten seconds, one of them was going to point out his resemblance to Tilrey, and he was going to have to grab one of those big ladles on the wall and brain someone with it. Probably himself.

“Ahh,” Stefan said. Then, to Ceill’s intense relief, he changed the subject. “Do you know a boy named Ludo Akeina?”

If only it hadn’t been _that_ subject. Maybe they’d known each other before Stefan left school. “He’s in my dorm-pod. Why?”

Stefan grinned in that false-casual way. “I obliged him last ten-day, that’s all. I was his birthday present from his dad.”

Ludo. Stefan. Ludo’s dad _giving_ Stefan to Ludo. Ceill’s horror must have been written all over his face, because Stefan said hurriedly, “I’m only telling you because I think Ludo might throw it in your face. I think he wants to impress you.”

“ _Me_?” If there was anything worse than the image of Ludo in bed with Stefan, it was Ludo and Stefan gossiping about Ceill. “Ludo Akeina doesn’t want to impress me. He hates me.”

Ansha laughed as if Ceill were a silly child. “None of your schoolmates hate you, young Fir. Who could hate you?”

Ceill ignored that. “Why would you talk to Ludo about me?”

“I didn’t bring you up!” Stefan protested. “Ludo did. He said there was a boy he wanted to tell, someone who was a fan of the stream, and then he, uh, described you. I think.”

Ludo, describing him. In bed with Stefan. “But why?” Ceill asked helplessly. All he’d done was try to offer Stefan his help, and somehow it had led to an outpouring of information he didn’t want to know. Did everyone in the world find his naïveté hilarious?

“Search me. I don’t miss schoolboy politics one bit, but I thought you should know. Especially ’cause this Ludo obviously has a crush on you.”

Ceill’s cheeks burned so hard he couldn’t speak. Ansha grinned lazily and said, “Poor young Fir Ludo. Gonna get his heart broken.”

Stefan leaned over and spoke in Ceill’s ear, his breath as warm and enticing as his voice was cruel: “In case you’re wondering, he’s not the greatest lay. You could do much better.”

***

For the next few days, Ceill avoided Ludo Akeina with a vengeance. When the other boy approached, he dropped his gaze or veered in the opposite direction.

So, naturally, Ludo ambushed him late one night in the dorm bathroom.

Ceill was at the mirror, experimentally trying to shave the scant hairs from his chin with the straight razor that Aleks had given him for his birthday present. A stall door that had been slightly ajar opened all the way, and his nemesis sauntered out.

“Nice razor, Linnett,” Ludo said. “You could cut someone’s throat with that.”

_Yeah. Yours._ But no, he would never pollute Aleks’s gift that way. The razor had come with a message from Aleks explaining that all Northmen received a razor when they turned eighteen; whether they used it or not, it served as a symbol of their free choice.

Ceill kept his trap shut and focused on not cutting himself.

Naturally, when he glanced away from the mirror, Ludo was standing right beside him. “Hey,” the other boy said. He unfolded a color printout and held it out to Ceill. “Seen these yet?”

_More pictures._ The last thing Ceill needed. A stray glance told him this photo was of Stefan, lying on a bed and very naked. Not an amateur shot, nothing Ludo could have snapped himself. Probably one of the display stills Kai did for the Brothel.

Ceill clenched his jaw and returned his gaze to his image in the mirror. He’d been annoyed with Stefan earlier, but now he was glad to be prepared for this encounter. If Ludo wanted to see him squirm in shame and jealousy, he would be disappointed.

“Nice,” he said. “But I’m not really into streams anymore.”

“ _Nice_?” Ludo peeled off another grubby printout. Ceill didn’t look at it.

“That’s not just nice,” Ludo said in a low, throbbing voice. “That’s mind-blowing. I mean, imagine holding that, putting your hands all over it. Imagine _fucking_ that.”

Ceill turned on the tap and rinsed the razor, trying to ignore the erratic beat in his temples. He couldn’t let on that he knew what was coming. He couldn’t point out that Stefan wasn’t an _it_. “Mind-blowing,” he repeated dryly.

“It _was_ mind-blowing, Linnett. I know because I did it. I went to the Sanctioned and I fucked Darius.”

Was that the big reveal? The way Ludo said “Sanctioned,” like he was one of the Northmen talking about their gods, made Ceill want to laugh. He splashed warm water on his face and washed the soap off, wondering why he’d ever bothered to care about anything this person said. “Good for you.”

“You don’t believe me? My dad bought him for my birthday present. It was his first night on offer at the Brothel. There was an actual auction.” Ludo sounded downright awed with himself. “I’m not lying, Ceill. I lost my virginity to him. Don’t you want to know how he was?”

Ceill toweled his face. He carefully dried the razor and slid it into its sheath. “You were with an actor,” he said, slinging the towel over his shoulder. “Not Darius.”

It was sickening to think of Councillor Lindthardt “bidding on” Stefan after being one of the people responsible for his presence in the Brothel in the first place. Even though Stefan had laughed off his offer of help, Ceill couldn’t stop thinking about doing something.

Whatever he did had to be smart, not impulsive or naïve. And maybe, he thought, gathering up his toiletries, Gersha wasn’t the best one to help him. Tilrey was the one in the Sector every day, networking and pulling the strings of power. If Ceill told Gersha, Gersha would simply pass it on, and then Tilrey would know—or figure out, sooner or later—that Ceill had been in the Brothel.

_Damn._ He wandered into the hallway, almost forgetting about Ludo—only to be brought up short by a cold voice behind him.

“I figured you wouldn’t be impressed,” the other boy said, softly to avoid detection by the dorm monitoring system. “I mean, you grew up around fancy whores, right? You had one changing your diapers. You wouldn’t understand what it means for a _real_ high name to bag his first elite piece of—”

At first, Ceill was confused when Ludo broke off mid-sentence. Then Ludo’s face contorted into an expression that could only be interpreted as fear.

Ceill looked down and saw the razor in his own hand. But it was sheathed, and he’d been holding it earlier, hadn’t he? Okay, maybe he hadn’t been pointing it at Ludo then. Maybe he was now.

His throat was tight with helpless rage at everything Ludo had just said, but that was par for the course. Experimentally, he arched a brow. Ludo flinched.

What was wrong with the little prick? It was true that Ceill was several inches taller than Ludo these days, and broader in the chest and shoulders, but fighting was a dangerous offense for students so close to Notification. Did Ludo think having a Drudge father made Ceill a thug? Or was Ceill’s anger just . . . scary?

_Interesting._ Very deliberately, Ceill smoothed his expression and tucked the razor inside his towel.

“Why should I be impressed? It’s not like you won him, Ludo.” His eyes teared with the effort of not turning and walking away as fast as he could, but he had one more thing to say. “And personally, I wouldn’t want my _dad_ to be responsible for getting me laid.”

Ludo hissed something after him—possibly “Your dad’s pure scum,” but Ceill was already halfway down the hall. He didn’t ask for a clarification.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you're like me, you're wondering: How can an Oslov use the word "emo" when they barely even have music, let alone musical genres? "Emo" is actually my idiomatic translation of the slang word _gollol_ , which literally means "melty." ;)
> 
> Also, Ansha calls Lindahl "Risha" because it's a nickname for Enrik, his first name IIRC. Inconveniently, Risha or Rishka is a nickname for a lot of Oslov names, such as Enrik and Fredrich, as well as for Tilrey. (And Tilrey's full name is actually Tilhard, so he could also be called Harsha, but I'm really getting into the weeds here. I just love my name lore. :) )
> 
> Have a safe and happy new year's eve, everyone! 2021 has to be better. <3 <3


	14. Prisoners

“You’re okay,” Kai said, squeezing Einara’s hand. “Just pretend you’re back home in my bed, under the covers.”

Through the blanket that covered her head, Einara saw a play of streetlights and shadow. The city was out there, unendurably vast and cold and full of strangers. She was safe in the back seat of the Brothel van, with its four snug walls. But if the van crashed, if the mag grid failed, she would die in an instant. Cold, fire, impact. The world held so many unforeseeable dangers.

In the early days, Hulda had warned her: _The longer you go without leaving the Brothel, the harder it gets to leave._ But the first time Einara escaped, determined to contact Aleks, she hadn’t even needed a vehicle. She’d walked proudly through the underground city on her own two feet, all the way to the Outer Ring.

How long ago was that? Fifteen years? Sixteen? Now she could barely imagine taking two steps outside without Kai’s arms guiding her. _What a fierce avenger I am._ She folded her knees to her chest and reached for Kai.

He pulled her into his lap. “I’m here. Breathe. Nothing bad’s gonna happen.”

“Shh,” Einara murmured. Ansha was driving the van, and it was bad enough that he knew she was hiding like a frightened child; she didn’t want him to hear Kai soothing her, too.

“I’ll be all right,” she whispered into the reassuring wall of Kai’s chest. “Once I get there, in the room, I’ll be fine. No windows, you said?”

“Just one, narrow and high up. You won’t see a thing.”

_I must conquer this. I will conquer it._ She hadn’t spent all these years scheming to reach Aleks Snowblind only to end up cowering in front of him because open spaces terrified her.

The Brothel was a trap. Kai’s open arms and words of love were a trap. Oslov itself was a trap, and she must never forget that.

Chaos was her birthright, and from now on she would embrace it. She wouldn’t let a warm, comfortable burrow swallow her whole.

***

When the Northmen arrived, Einara was already ensconced in the café’s back room, sitting at the elevated meeting table with her back to the window and her head held high. Kai occupied a chair against the wall, and she’d made sure the steward was conspicuously posted outside.

Aleks had his own retinue. The first to enter was a bluff, pleasant-looking young man with a coppery beard, followed by an older man with permanent furrows of mistrust scored into his brow.

“Fir’n Derán?” the older one said, unsmiling, with a thick Thurskein accent. And then, when she nodded, “Get up, both of you. Gotta search you.”

Einara got up, but Kai bridled. “Search us for what?”

She shot him a warning glance, reminding him to control his Reddan arrogance, and held her arms away from her body. Kai followed suit, but as the older Northman ran efficient hands over him, he asked, “Do we get to reciprocate?”

The Northman grunted and moved on to Einara. She held still as he patted her down, saying in a smooth, cold voice, “No need. This is our city, and we aren’t afraid.”

Not here, anyway, in this room. Never mind how she’d clung to Kai as they left the van, crushing her face against his chest to avoid a vertiginous glimpse of the streets and warehouses of the Outer Ring.

She was in control now. She sat down again, straightening her jacket, and said, “You can go now, Kai.” And to the two Northmen: “Now that you know I’m defenseless, I hope I can see your master alone.”

The Northmen bristled visibly at the word “master”—an archaic one, seldom used in modern Oslov, that she’d hoped would be appropriate. But they didn’t object. The older one left with Kai, while the younger held the door open for a man she might not have glanced twice at in other circumstances.

He was slight, youthful, with a hawk nose and a wild mop of dark hair. Handsome, but nothing extraordinary. The others showed no special deference to him, yet the way they looked at him spoke volumes. And when she herself looked closer, into the keen brown eyes, she knew at once this was Aleks Thulver or Snowblind.

The eyes—what was it about them? As Aleks offered her his hand to clasp, he broke into a boyish smile, and those eyes caught and reflected all the light in the room. Einara smiled back before she knew what she was doing.

“Ah, you really are beautiful. Just like Ceill said.” The words had no insinuation in them, only innocent admiration. Aleks sat down opposite her. “It’s rare that I see anyone so glamorous, living among workers like I do.”

“You’re kind, Fir.” She kept her voice respectful but chilly, the way she did with Bors Dartán. “Being alluring is the business of all us whores, I’m afraid.”

Another sweet smile. “This whole city is alluring to rough outdoor folk like us.”

Aleks probably took for granted his ability to charm others, women in particular. He’d had an adoring mama, Einara suspected. But he needed to know she wasn’t charmed.

Leaning forward, she said, “I come from ‘rough outdoor folk’ myself, and I have a question: Why do you call yourself Snowblind? In the Wastes, snow blindness is nothing to make light of. It can be a death sentence.”

Aleks’s smile didn’t waver. “When I was thirteen, I developed snow blindness outdoors one day and had a vision of a great, glowing owl descending on me, spreading its wings to engulf me. My grandmother believed in the old Feudal ways. She took this as a sign that I’d been chosen by the Spark to bring deliverance to our people.”

_Lord of the Light Web._ The Northmen believed in a supernatural life force not unlike the deities of Harbour. The fingers of Einara’s right hand twitched with the old instinct to make a sign of catching-light, something she hadn’t done since she was a child. “And have you delivered your people?” she asked.

Aleks’s smile was gone. “I have a question for you, too. You’re an Outer from the Wastes, or so young Ceill tells me. Why do you sound like a Reddan born and bred?”

Trickier than he looked, he’d evaded her own question. “I’ve lived here for more than twenty years.”

His eyes didn’t leave her. “I’ve known Outers who assimilated. Your accent is different from theirs. As if it were learned in a schoolroom.”

The old terror of exposure flickered through Einara, washing her briefly in the queasy panic that had pushed her to kill Irin Dartán. But she was older now, decades removed from Colonel Thibault’s persuasion tactics. This man had no power over her.

“I’ve come to discuss an agreement for our mutual benefit,” she said, leaving his question hanging just as he had hers. “It seems to me we might have common goals, and each of us has assets the other lacks. You have impressive manpower and mobility, while I have access to the secrets of the rulers of this so-called Republic.”

Aleks didn’t blink at the seditious phrasing. “If you’re the girl Szaralund met sixteen years ago in the Greenhouse, then you have something else, too. A secret you tout as extremely powerful.”

_The Verses._ He had a damnably good memory, or Szaralund did. But these days Einara was too cautious to begin with her greatest secret. First she needed to know if they could work together at all.

“Indeed I do have a prize,” she said, “and I believe it’s one you’re seeking yourself. The location of the Sanctioned Sweetbush.”

Caught off guard at last, he stared at her, those dark eyes burning. “Don’t trifle with me.”

“I can prove it.” Einara gave the barest shrug. “First, though, I need to know if we can trust each other enough to collaborate.”

She had his full attention now, the pressure of that gaze somewhere between intoxicating and frightening. “Are you Hearth?” he asked.

“The current Brothel Director works with the Hearth. I’ve served her loyally, but our goals differ. The Hearth seems to want to reform the Republic.” She lowered her voice, though she and Kai had checked the room carefully for surveillance equipment, and said with a certain relish, “I want to burn it down.”

The words took a moment to sink in. Then a madcap smile transformed Aleks’s face. “Just that? Such a modest goal.”

She smiled back. “Some of us are modest. Others, less so.”

“Most people would decide right now you aren’t in your right mind and end this conversation.”

Einara knew Kai had thought she was unhinged when she first came clean to him, all those years ago. Since then, she’d kept him as much in the dark about her real motives as possible, for both their sakes.

Aleks was no Kai, though. He looked less alarmed than intrigued. “But not you?” she asked with a teasing edge on her voice. “Are you perhaps a little mad yourself?”

Aleks shifted in his chair. “Some certainly call us mad, but we don’t believe in burning anything. Violence isn’t our way.”

“Nor mine.” It hadn’t been, at least, until Oslov brought fire and death to a stretch of sleepy, defenseless farmland called Michigan. “But how else do you propose to free yourselves from the giant prison you live in?” she asked, still in the teasing tone. “Or do you even want freedom?”

The young man’s form went rigid, but he didn’t raise his voice. “If Thurskein could hold us, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“And yet you’ll return to Thurskein before you’re missed, won’t you? Just as I’ll return to my prison.” She gave a throb to her voice, trying to forget how safe and comfortable her prison felt. “What’s your goal, then, if not to bring the walls down?”

Aleks’s eyes flashed their strange light at her. “We are the true and original Oslovs, the ones who survived and made a home in this wilderness. We’re waiting to take it back.”

“ _Waiting_?” Einara made her voice a lash. “Are you willing to wait for this technocracy to last centuries more? Or are you hoping it just happens to crumble in your lifetime?”

“Neither.” Aleks smiled almost sheepishly, making it clear she wasn’t the first one to mock his principles. “We trust in our instincts.”

He sounded like Einara’s grandmother telling her to have faith in the Lord of Light and leave vengeance to Him. She suppressed a shiver of disgust. “I see. So, why are you searching for the Sweetbush, Aleks Snowblind? Is that simply what your ‘instincts’ tell you to do, or is there an actual reason?”

He didn’t flinch, only fired back his own question: “Why are you messing with my friend Ceill Linnett, Einara Derán? What do you want with him?”

“I wanted him to lead me to you.” Religious language might be the best bet with this strange prophet of the Drudges. “I’ve always had faith that you would help me.”

“Help you what?” Aleks’s frown was deepening. “You say you want to burn down the Republic, but not why. How can I help you if all I know is that you want to achieve the impossible and hurt a lot of innocent people in the process?”

A wind howled outside, no doubt whipping up flurries. Einara shuddered, thinking of those vast open spaces.

She couldn’t tell him the whole truth—not yet, anyway—but she needed his trust to forge an alliance. Without the support of his loyal followers, she could do nothing.

“You call your people innocent,” she said, “yet you let them be enslaved. Why does Oslov rule the fallen world, Aleks Snowblind? Why does no power on earth dare to stand against the Republic?”

Aleks looked confused. “Oslovs don’t rule the world. We simply . . . withdrew from it, to a place where no one would follow us.”

It was the first lesson taught in every Oslov school—the doctrine of self-sufficiency. Even Bors and Kai still had utter faith in it. Einara let her smile twist mockingly. “I didn’t expect to see _you_ repeating that lie. Tell me, if the Republic stands alone at the top of the world, with no rivals or enemies, then why does it need all those silos full of deadly weapons?”

His expression hardened into something grim. “To enforce the rules of the Whybergian system against its own people. To keep us fearful and obedient.”

“Weapons keep us afraid. Sap keeps us numb.” Einara matched his hard stare. “You want to know my goals? The achievable ones? I want to sabotage the Sweetbush so they can’t lull us into obedience. I want to seize and disable their weapons so they can’t frighten us.” _All of us, all over the world_ —but he didn’t need to know that yet. “I don’t love violence any more than you do, Aleks. But if our freedom means burning down Redda, then that’s what I’ll do.”

She paused for a long, strategic moment, holding those mesmerizing eyes with her own. “Are you with me? Or do you want to keep _waiting_ for things to change of their own accord?”

***

As they rose to clasp hands a second time, sealing their alliance, Aleks happened to glance out the high window.

He saw snow whirling in a drab courtyard. Far beyond it, over the warehouse roofs, shone the black granite spires at the core of the city, each outlined in sparkling lights through the long winter darkness. There, where he’d never been, his father was probably working late in the office or sharing a drink with colleagues at the Restaurant or Lounge.

Once, in his childhood, Aleks had overheard his father apologizing to his mother for not bringing him to visit Redda. “If he works hard enough at school, he’ll be Raised,” his father said in a tired, rote way. “Everyone has to walk the same hard road; there’s no jumping the line.”

Aleks’s mother leapt up, her eyes flashing. “And when did _you_ walk this hard road to Redda, Niko? When did your ancestors walk it? It seems to me you never left the lap of privilege except when you were pretending to be one of us.”

Niko didn’t take the criticism well; he pointedly spoke only to Aleks and ignored Aleks’s mother for the rest of the visit, in his phlegmatic Strutter way. Aleks supposed that was the beginning of the end for them as any sort of couple.

Now, embarking on a new relationship of a very different kind, he imagined the city’s spires wreathed in flames. _Yes. Burn it down,_ a sly voice whispered inside him.

It was the voice of an angry child who’d been left behind, rejected. Aleks reminded himself that he was a leader, a visionary, not a boy having a tantrum. Still, it would be satisfying to make the lofty bureaucrats of the Sector sweat.

And depriving them of their sap fixes would certainly do that, in a most non-violent way. Even his mother and the elders would approve.

“One last thing,” he said, pausing at the door. He couldn’t let himself forget. “I’ve known Ceill Linnett since he was a kid. I know he looks like rich pickings to you, with his connections and his confused sympathies. But I don’t want him hurt.”

Einara’s icy blue eyes were incredulous. “You’re an outlaw. He’s a Councillor’s son. _You_ worry about _him_?”

Aleks couldn’t tell her he was a Councillor’s son, too, or that he felt a kinship to anyone who was deemed a “misbirth,” and especially to Ceill because he’d been responsible for opening the lad’s eyes to the fact. “Yes,” he said curtly. “I want you to keep him out of your schemes from now on.”

After a moment, she nodded. “That I can do. But I can’t make guarantees about keeping him away from the Brothel. He’s made friends there, and he has some silly notion of making a ‘document’ of the place with his new camera.”

Aleks hoped that camera didn’t get Ceill in trouble. But he didn’t blame the boy for wanting to spend his free time with streamers and whores over his schoolmates. “Just keep an eye on him,” he said, “and don’t use him again. That’s all I ask.”

She nodded. “Do we have an agreement, then?”

“We do.” Aleks inclined his head, finding to his surprise that his instincts told him to trust her. He’d come to the meeting skeptical, and he didn’t like how she’d gotten vague when he asked for her motives, but she could just as easily have outright lied. Whatever she was, Outer or something else, he would reserve judgment till he met her allies in the Southern Range. If they brought him to the Sweetbush, so much the better. If the turncoat Int/Sec agent turned his coat again and arrested Aleks, well, Aleks had a way out.

“Tell your man where and when to meet us,” he said. “And if he chooses to betray us, keep in mind I’ve been caught before. Like a snow devil, I’m not easy to hold.”

She smiled in her incongruously girlish way. “You should have called yourself Snowdevil. Far more appropriate.”

“Too late now.” He returned the smile. “Till next time, Outer.”

“Goodbye, Northman.”

Outside, a freezing wind whipped up the snow in the alley between the warehouses. Still, Aleks paused at the top of the exposed staircase for a last look at the distant spires of Government Sector.

Packed into the hold of a cargo plane, he wouldn’t get another glimpse on the way home. He wished he dared take a real jaunt through the city, but the inner rings were better patrolled and full of checkpoints.

Einara wasn’t wrong. He enjoyed some freedom of movement, but that only made his prison roomier.

A gust of wind cost him his balance and nearly threw him off the staircase. Ever vigilant, Lasha caught him around the waist and hauled him upright.

“Well?” he asked, guiding Aleks down the last steps to the street. “Did we come all the way here just to listen to a madwoman?”

_I hope not._ Aleks liked the fruits of their alliance so far, and his inner voice told him to go forward. But he was a cautious man—if nothing else, he got that from his father.

He needed to project confidence. The plan wouldn’t work unless they were all on board.

“You’re so cynical, Lasha,” he said, clapping his lover on the shoulder. “Wait till I tell you the good news.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I've been anticipating this chapter for a while, but I didn't anticipate posting it on a day when democracy is being attacked in my country. I'm probably getting on a soapbox and stating the obvious, but: I don't believe in "burning it down" when "it" is the will of the people as expressed in a lawful election.
> 
> I feel so much gratitude to everyone who's been working for months to get out the vote, and to everyone who's been doing good in their communities and treating Covid patients and doing essential jobs and just keeping society going. So, yeah. Oslov is undemocratic and oppressive. Democracy is well worth defending. Stay safe, everybody. <3


	15. Best-Laid Plans

“Ceill?” Gersha cracked open the door. “I wasn’t sure if you were home yet.”

Ceill was sprawled on his bed scrolling through his latest crop of photos, deciding which to save and print. He fought an impulse to hide the camera; that would just tell his dad something was up. “I’ve been home a while,” he said casually.

He didn’t mention why he hadn’t come to say hello: Gersha and Tilrey had been arguing in the other room. Ceill hadn’t heard much, because neither was a shouter, but Gersha’s snippiness and Tilrey’s cold annoyance were hard to miss. It gave him an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Did you take more photos? Can I see?” Gersha came over, beaming with childish excitement.

Ceill quickly closed the folder he’d been examining and scrolled to one that didn’t hold any images from the Brothel. Why did his dad have to be so damn involved with everything he did? Or maybe Gersha feared he’d heard the argument and was doing his best to pretend nothing was wrong.

He clicked through innocuous images of snowy buildings—studies in light and shadow, he hoped, though these days he had little light to work with. Gersha watched over his shoulder, exclaiming at practically every image: “Oh, that’s nice! The way light hits the side of the Records building, it looks like water flowing down. You see such fascinating things, Ceill.”

_If you only knew._ “These are all muddy. I’ll get better shots when the sun comes back.”

“No doubt!” Gersha sat down on the bed, signaling that he hadn’t come just to admire Ceill’s hobby. “How’s that engineering review going? Want me to test you on the parts of an HV system?”

“I did that with Claes last period. A thousand times.” Verdant green hells with burbling brooks, Ceill had never wanted to be done with anything like he wanted to be done with the E-Squareds. He didn’t _need_ to know the parts of an HV system any more than he really needed to know how to write code. From what he could tell, the whole battery of tests was based on what some stuck-up elites a century ago had considered essential knowledge for other stuck-up elites, mixed with practical skills so they could kid themselves into thinking the average person could survive any disaster and rebuild Oslov from scratch.

Ceill didn’t want to survive a disaster and rebuild Oslov from scratch. “I’m studying, Dad,” he said glumly. “I know what happens next month.”

“Ah. Of course.” Gersha looked unhappy, too, perhaps nostalgic for the days when Ceill would willingly sit through hours of tutoring to make his father proud.

Ceill still wanted to make Gersha proud. He was just tired of all the things that mattered being things he sucked at, while the things he enjoyed and was good at—skiing, climbing, photography, writing streams, keeping secrets—had no bearing on his future at all.

“I meant to ask,” Gersha said, “are you free for dinner next third-day? We’re working on getting Councillor Akeina’s support for a very important bill.”

Ceill went cold at the thought of Ludo’s Councillor mother. “Will her family come?”

“No, no.” Gersha spoke with such strained assurance that Ceill was suddenly sure he and Tilrey had been arguing about Councillor Akeina. “She and her husband don’t get on, it seems. But she expressed a desire to meet you.” He got up. “Tilrey talks so much about you at the office, you see.”

Ceill didn’t believe for a second that was the reason. Fir’n Akeina was probably curious about the rumored misbirth and eager to see if he favored Tilrey as much as people said. His dads often complained that the Sector ran on gossip.

And now, because they needed a vote, they were serving him up as gossip fodder. No, thanks. He was about to refuse to show up for dinner when he abruptly remembered something more important than his pride: what Akeina’s husband, Councillor Lindthardt, had done to Stefan.

“Dad,” he said, “is there a way to help somebody who’s been posted against their will?”

Gersha looked troubled. “It’s always possible to appeal a posting. But when it’s done with the intention of shirking work, the appeal’s less likely to be successful. Why? Are you worried about—”

“No, not me!” How on earth could he frame this? “It’s somebody from my school, a boy who was Notified last year, I think. He’s a Laborer, and he was working in the Sector and made a Councillor angry, and . . .” An idea came. “His younger brother’s a friend of mine. This boy, the older brother—the Councillor had him posted to the Sanctioned Brothel without his consent. That shouldn’t happen, should it?”

Gersha looked distinctly pained now. “It certainly shouldn’t,” he said, emphasizing each word. “But have you spoken with the older brother yourself, to make _sure_ he didn’t want to be posted to the Brothel? Or only to the younger one?”

Ceill hung his head. He couldn’t admit he’d been to the Brothel. “The younger one. But why would my friend lie about that?”

“I’m not suggesting he’s lying. Not at all.” His father looked more and more uncomfortable. “But sometimes these families of Reddan Laborers are very proud, and they may not want their name associated with . . . well, that. Anyway, to bring an appeal, you would need a sworn statement from the complainant himself.”

Ceill could imagine how scathingly Stefan would react to a request for a “sworn statement.” He had no trust in the system, and who could blame him?

But his lie had given him an idea. Maybe Stefan did have family members who would have some sway over him. “I’ll tell my friend that,” he said. “If there was a sworn statement, would you be able to help? You or Tilrey?”

Gersha paused in the doorway. “I hope we would, Ceill. I’m glad you have friends from different backgrounds, and I’m glad you’re concerned about this. It—I—” He dropped his eyes. “When I was your age, it would never have occurred to me that the posting system could be misused or abused. I’m glad you’re able to think for yourself.”

From long experience with Gersha, Ceill could hear a _but_ coming. “But . . .?”

“But when Councillors are involved, things can be delicate.” Gersha sighed. “Tilrey can explain better than I can. Maybe we can talk about it next third-day, after our guest leaves—you’ll be there, won’t you?”

Now it was Ceill’s turn to sigh. “Okay.”

***

_Feb. 5. Resort trailhead. Dusk. News to brief you on._

All Bors Dartán’s messages were terse and uninformative. When Valgund found this one in the hollow of the gnarled pine on Kvesh Knoll—their securest means of communication—he wasn’t sure what to expect. Five ten-days had passed since their last meeting, with no word.

On the appointed day at the appointed time, he did his morning rounds as usual and met his strange friend at the trailhead closest to the resort complex.

Bors’s face was glowing, not just from the bitter cold, while his overall demeanor was even twitchier than usual. They didn’t embrace—not that Valgund expected to—but they did clasp both hands, their eyes meeting.

Neither spoke. Bors hitched a shoulder toward the trail as if to say, _Come on, we can’t talk here_. Valgund followed him into the woods, amused by this typical air of secrecy.

They hiked at least ten minutes through the sharp blue dusk before Bors finally spoke, ushering Valgund onto a narrow branching trail. “We’re meeting them on Veildda Point.”

“Meeting _who_?” During Bors’s long midwinter absence, Valgund had secured a supply of _Rhizoctonia muirthorni_ and read up on the process of injecting trees with fungal solutions, distracting himself pleasantly with his little project. He’d also done some thinking—okay, some fantasizing—about his friend. He had a hunch that, for all his bossiness, Bors might like someone else to take charge in bed, and the thought was oddly exciting.

Even now, as they walked, Valgund imagined how the spy might look with his skinny neck bared and his eyes slitted in ecstasy. Those eyes were almost blue in certain lights. Long ago, before he decided to take the security of the Republic on his shoulders, Bors might even have been a handsome boy.

But Valgund couldn’t let himself get carried away with fantasies. The more practical problem of Bors’s phantom—or non-existent?—allies remained.

The near-dark couldn’t conceal the excited glitter of Bors’s eyes. “You’ll see!” he said. Then, as if he lacked the strength to keep Valgund in suspense a second longer, he hissed, “Northmen!”

Bors had enlisted the fucking Northmen? Valgund felt a little dizzy. As they climbed the steep path to Veildda Point, clinging to trees for support, he tried to ask questions. But Bors just kept saying infuriatingly, “We’re almost there!”

Sure enough, they soon emerged into a tiny clearing, a dimple in the slope, where someone had built a neat, round snow shelter in the Outer fashion. A thread of smoke unfurled from the hole at the top.

A form solidified among the trees to their right—a burly woman with a silver braid dangling to her waist. Over her shoulder she carried what looked like a homemade bow and a quiver of arrows. “Here for the hunting party?” she asked in a Thurskein accent, sneering a little.

Glancing at Bors, Valgund understood why. Taken by surprise, the spy had adopted a comical defensive posture. A moment later, though, Bors drew himself up proudly and said, “The game is on the run today, sister.”

The woman tipped her head toward the shelter. Valgund looked to Bors for guidance. Were they really going blind into close quarters with an unknown number of Free Northmen?

Apparently so. With no further hesitation, Bors bent to crawl through the shelter’s low opening. Steeling himself, Valgund followed him.

Lawless or not, the Northmen wouldn’t hurt him, he told himself. When Bors first questioned him, Valgund had said the Northmen took no notice of him, but actually he assumed they were as aware of his presence in the woods as he was of theirs. If they were smart, they knew he could have reported them long ago.

Inside the shelter, a woman and three men—one of them more of a boy—sat shoulder to shoulder around the smoldering fire. The other woman had stayed outside, presumably as a sentry.

“Welcome,” said the man in the center. He was clean-shaven, with lips that formed a pleasant smile and compelling dark eyes that scrutinized them, not smiling at all.

“Aleks Snowblind,” Bors said, sitting down on his haunches. His eyes glowed again, now with an odd wistfulness, as if the Northman were a long-lost lover. “My name is Bors.”

“First names only, eh? That suits us.” Aleks’s eyes moved to Valgund. “And you?”

“Gunsha.” The nickname sounded a little less obviously high-Upstart.

“He’s the botanist,” Bors said, sounding a little breathless. “I’m the security expert.”

Aleks arched a brow. Valgund suspected he knew very well that Bors was Int/Sec. “This is Lasha,” he said, indicating a red-bearded man to his right, “and Bronia”—a keen-eyed, broad-shouldered woman—“and Janta”—the one who barely looked out of his teens. “Einara tells me we have a plan to discuss, involving some ailing trees.”

“If Einara trusts you, then we trust you,” Bors said in his stiff way. He still seemed awed just to be talking to the Northmen’s leader, leaving Valgund unsure whether to be jealous or amused.

“Trust comes with fellowship,” Aleks said noncommittally. “We’re here to listen.”

Bors slid off his backpack and unzipped it. “Before we decide who’ll play what role, I want to show you some surveillance photos of—”

He broke off as, seemingly from nowhere, Lasha produced a long knife. Bronia had a pistol. Both were trained steadily on Bors. Valgund’s breath froze in his throat as he, like Bors, went statue-still.

“My people can be jumpy,” Aleks said in a friendly way. “Be kind enough to hand me that so they don’t get the wrong idea.”

After a moment, Bors handed over the pack, scowling. “Don’t touch my handheld.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, _Fir_.” A sweet smile. “Now, what am I looking for? Photos, you say?” Aleks pulled out the stiff printouts and examined them. “I see. Very nice, but they’re night shots. You do realize we’ll have to see the site for ourselves before we plan an infiltration?”

“I _have_ a plan.” Bors sounded exasperated.

Valgund touched his friend’s arm, silently advising him to simmer down. “I’m the one who led Bors to the site,” he said, facing Aleks. “I can show you, too—tonight, if you like. But first we should go over a few basics. It’s in the twelfth mountain quadrant, accessible only by helicopter. The helipad’s just outside the enclosure, which has an alarmed fence maybe ten meters high and four guard towers, one at each corner.”

As he spoke, he reached over and pointed out each feature on the photo in Aleks’s hand. The Northmen bent close over the fire to see better, murmuring to one another.

“Janta can disable the fence,” Lasha said with a wink at the youth. “Anything with wires, he can knock out. The bigger problem is the surveillance.”

“I’ll handle that.” Bors said grandly. “I have a device.”

“He has a scrambler,” Valgund explained. “Government-issue.”

The Northmen looked impressed. “We’ll still need to distract the guards on the side where we breach the fence,” Bronia said. “Can’t have them checking their monitors and seeing a scrambled feed.”

They were all silent for a moment, watching the embers glow as they contemplated the problem. Then Lasha said, “Twelfth quadrant is right next door to the air guard base. If they process the sap on-site, they probably bring it to the base for distribution. They wouldn’t want to fly the cargo any farther—too obvious.”

“Must be a shit job,” Bronia said, “being out there in the middle of nowhere. A trip to the base would be like a vacation.”

“And that’s where the Sweetbush staff finds their amusements, their R-and-R.” Aleks snapped his fingers. “Their whores. There’s quite a little brothel in the Outer village next to the base, if I remember correctly.”

Bronia nodded. “Bers used to be stationed there. He knows all the good-time boys and girls.”

Aleks’s eyes were sparkling at last. “When the guards get lonely in the Sweetbush, they probably invite company back from the base. Let’s find out who and when. With a little extra motivation for the ‘entertainment,’ we’ll make sure they keep the guards occupied.”

Bors was looking uncomfortable. “You don’t really put that much trust in whores? I mean, no offense to them, but anyone who can be bought easily . . .”

“These aren’t like your Reddan whores, my good Fir Int/Sec Agent.” Bors’s jaw clenched, and Aleks smiled that dimply smile again. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “Yes, of course I know who you work for. How else would you have access to a scrambler on government frequencies?”

Bors glowered. “We’re here to do a job. Nothing else is relevant.”

“You’re right about that.” Aleks’s eyes moved around the circle. Lasha, who looked ready to go for his weapon again if Bors presented a threat, visibly relaxed when he met his leader’s gaze.

“Anyway, as I was saying, these aren’t Reddan whores,” Aleks said. “They’re Skeinshaka and Outers, and some of them have had friends and family and lovers murdered by the Republic.” He met Bors’s eyes. “Or did you forget the army straight-up kills Outers who don’t comply with its relocation plans? Really, working in Int/Sec, I feel like you should know these things.”

“Violence is used as a last resort,” Bors said in a thick voice. “Anyway, Outers who choose to live in a state of savagery pose a threat to civilization.”

“Have you ever even met one of these so-called savages?”

“We give them chances to assimilate. Always.” But Bors looked as if he were walking on ice that had just cracked under him.

Valgund caught his friend’s elbow again. Stroking it to quell Bors’s trembling, he said, “This doesn’t seem like the time or place to air our political disagreements. We agree on injecting the trees, I think, and we trust you to find a distraction for the guards. Shall we go see the site now?”

The Northmen all looked eager to get out of the smoky shelter. But they waited for Aleks’s nod before cramming themselves out the door.

“Walk ahead with me,” Aleks said to Valgund once they were outside. With a subtle tilt of his head—Valgund barely caught it—he ordered Lasha and Bronia to flank Bors.

Bors looked unhappy with the arrangement, but they were outnumbered. Valgund did his best to calm him with a glance. Then he led the way through the snowy darkness toward the trail that would take them up Mount Eisha to the lookout point.

“I know you,” Aleks said as they navigated the steep path between icy crags, a tunnel of spruce hiding the sky. “You live in Fir Councillor Gádden’s villa. Fir’n Admin Linnett is your sister.”

Fear closed Valgund’s throat—he’d figured they were watching him, but not quite that closely. He managed to ask in a steady voice, “You followed me?”

“Anyone we see in the woods regularly, we know who they are. And we have our connections in ’Skein.”

Intuition told Valgund who the main connection was. “Mal Sollentaal.” Over lazy fireside conversations at Vera’s house, Mal had hinted more than once that he moved like a spy among all strata of the city, reporting back to Tilrey’s mother. Apparently he’d been helpful to Aleks, too. “I suppose he told you I have a history of anti-government resentment.”

The Northman smiled blandly, neither confirming nor denying. “I’m not worried about your loyalties, Fir Linnett—excuse me, Gunsha, if that’s what you prefer. You may not be one of us, but I know you walk a different path from the rest of your family.”

“I’m loyal to these woods,” Valgund blurted out. “I love my family, but institutions like the Republic—well, I don’t have much use for them. They treat this whole mountain range like a resource to exploit.”

He would have felt silly admitting this to Bors. But Aleks nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world to pay allegiance to trees. “Your friend, though,” he said. “I’ve been told by his allies in Redda that I can trust him, but I have to wonder about his motivation. Was he passed over for promotion at Int/Sec?”

Valgund remembered all the times he’d asked himself the same question. In his artless way, though, without spelling it out, Bors had given him all the answer he needed.

“My friend loves the Republic like his own mother,” he told Aleks. “Probably more than his own mother, actually. I took some time to trust him, too, but I haven’t regretted it.”

“Does he _know_ what we stand for?”

“Bors’s business is to know things.” Valgund let a smile spread over his face. “He was born a Laborer, Aleks. They taught him to hate himself, and he tried diligently, but he never entirely learned how. He’s secretly convinced he knows what’s best for all of us. And he loves the Republic so much he wants to save it from itself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently drafting a huge, monster chapter, so the two chapters leading up to it may be a little short. Or maybe I'll break up the huge chapter. Anyway, the climax and end are approaching, even if they're taking their time.
> 
> For consistency, I kept Tilrey and Gersha POV out of this story, focusing on Ceill instead as he comes into his own. But the next story will have a LOT of Tilrey POV, and I'm looking forward to getting back to him and their relationship. Thanks for reading! <3


	16. Knock Yourself Out

“I’m looking for Altmering, Linnea,” Ceill told the man at the front desk of the radiology department. “I’m a friend of her brother’s. I have a message for her.”

The receptionist looked doubtful, but Ceill’s school uniform, adorned with the badge of the city’s central kellthavina, commanded a certain respect. “I’ll let her know,” the man said. “She can probably meet you in the caf on her break—unless you need to get to school?”

Ceill shook his head. While school attendance was still compulsory, these days he had no classes, only self-guided review sessions for the E-Squareds. He could take the tram and sneak in late, and if someone chose to rat on him, too bad. “I’ll wait for her.”

Finding out the name and posting of Stefan’s sister had been easy. Gersha generally spent a few evenings of every ten-day shut up in his home office, catching up on research and coding to support Tilrey’s work in the Sector. He didn’t bother to lock the door when he stepped out to make tea or use the bathroom.

By means of strategic lurking, Ceill managed to sneak in and use the desktop computer, which offered easy access to the identity and personnel files of every Laborer citizen (and most Upstarts). While he was no hacker, he had a rudimentary sense of how to cover his tracks.

He wasn’t terribly worried about being caught, but the transgression gave him a small rush. It was so hypocritical of adults to expect you to spend thousands of hours learning programming languages on the closed school networks, when you weren’t allowed to get on a real net until after you were Notified. Shouldn’t information be free?

And if you weren’t Raised, you were never allowed to go properly online at all. Everybody had heard stories about disgruntled Drudges who used their kellthavina-earned knowledge to crack government networks, selling their skills to smugglers and other outlaws. Even Tilrey had network access only because Gersha had given it to him, and he had to use his handheld—technically Gersha’s handheld—on the sly.

Waiting for Stefan’s sister in the empty caf, observing himself in the strip of dark windows, Ceill thought he’d be happy never to stare at a screen again. Still, he didn’t like the idea of being outright banned from the digital world.

After about twenty minutes, a young woman approached him, wearing scrubs and a glossy braid wound around her head. Her soulful dark eyes resembled Stefan’s.

“You asked for me, young Fir?” She hovered beside his table as if it might be disrespectful to seat herself.

Ceill rose and clasped her hand, motioning her to take a seat before he resumed his own. The deference had caught him off-guard. For the first time, he realized this Laborer might see him as interfering in her private family matters.

“Uh. My name is Ceill Linnett. Your brother was a year ahead of me at school.”

Linnea’s eyes flicked to the badge on his chest. “I see,” she said in a lackluster way. “Do you want me to get you in touch with Stefan? Because that’s not really up to me, I’m afraid.”

Of course. She thought he was a crazed fan of the stream and Darius; it probably wasn’t the first time she’d been approached this way. Ceill shook his head. “I know where he is. I, uh, I’ve visited him there. I’m apprenticing with the streammakers,” he lied hurriedly, though she must know kellthavina students didn’t do trade apprenticeships. “The reason I came—I don’t know if you know _why_ Stefan is where he is, but after he told me—well, my father’s a Councillor, Fir’n Altmering.”

This was coming out all wrong. He forced himself to look straight into her eyes—which had widened—and to explain slowly and logically what Gersha had told him about using a sworn statement to make an official complaint about an undesired posting.

“If Stefan is willing to write a statement and sign it before witnesses, I believe my father could take it and make it count,” he finished, hoping this was so. “But I don’t think your brother would do it just on my say-so. He wouldn’t take it seriously. Or he might think I wanted something in return. That’s why I came to you.”

As he talked, Linnea’s face had grown perplexed. In the ensuing silence, it looked downright pained.

“We’ve only seen him once since . . .” she said, letting it trail off. “My parents and I. After we found out where he’d disappeared to, it took nearly a month to get the director of _that place_ to arrange a meeting. Everything goes through her, you know.” She avoided Ceill’s eyes. “My brother came to my parents’ apartment for an hour. There was a van waiting right outside to take him back. And he told us he’s perfectly happy where he is.”

Ceill should have known. “Stefan’s proud,” he said tentatively, not wanting to tell her what sorts of indignities Stefan’s pride was now subject to.

Linnea could probably guess. Skepticism tensed her shoulders and mouth. “He wanted to act in streams, he said. He got this wonderful part, a wonderful opportunity, and it’s just _easier_ to live in the Brothel.” Saying the word at last, she met Ceill’s eyes, her own full of silent rage. “It’s easier than doing some menial posting to fill up his requisite workload. So.” Another shrug. “My brother’s an adult, young Fir. We could fill out the paperwork to have him declared incompetent, but then they’d ship him off to moral rehab. We have to take him at his word.”

Her voice was resigned, yet her rigid posture sent a shiver rippling over Ceill’s shoulders. She might not know whom to blame, but she seemed ready to blame anyone—even him by default.

He wasn’t the one who’d done this, though. “Do you know about Fir Councillor Lindahl?”

Linnea shook her head. Her eyes narrowed. “What should I know?”

“It’s not my story to tell, Fir’n Altmering.” If Stefan hadn’t told his family, he wouldn’t want anyone else doing it for him. But there had to be _something_ Ceill could do.

“What Stefan told you wasn’t the whole truth,” he said. “You already know that, I guess. I can’t say much, but I know your brother’s been treated unfairly—criminally, even.”

Linnea just looked at him. “My folks believe in doing their jobs and keeping their heads down. Stefan’s different—headstrong. He doesn’t always consider the consequences of his actions. I always worried he’d get into trouble. And you, young Fir—if you’ll excuse me for saying so, you seem a little naïve.”

“I know I am.” Ceill’s voice broke. “But, if you’ll excuse me for asking, Fir’n, don’t you care about Stefan?”

She sighed, and he heard a weight of anguish in it. “What do you think, bright little schoolboy? Do I care?”

“I—I’m just trying to help.”

“I know you are. But you’re a _kid_.” Another sigh. “Your father’s a Councillor? And he actually told you to pursue this? That he’d help?”

Ceill nodded. “If your brother made a complaint, I think it could be successful. But he has to be willing to _do_ it.”

He made himself meet Linnea’s eyes again. The hostility had bled from them, leaving something bleak behind. Tears filled them as he said, “I think you could persuade Stefan to make a statement, Fir’n Altmering. He trusts you. If you write me a note for him, I’ll deliver it tomorrow night. I promise.”

***

Fir’n Councillor Vreya Akeina bore no resemblance to her son Ludo. She was tall and skinny and nervous, with blond hair done up in an elaborate crown of braids and eyes that popped when she wanted to show you how attentively she was listening to you.

She made Ceill nervous, too. He didn’t like the way she stared at him as he answered her standard questions about school and his tests. He didn’t like how eager she seemed to praise him, or how she gushed when Gersha brought out the food he’d ordered from the Restaurant—plus a dish of fritters he’d made—and served the four of them himself.

“Doing little tasks around the house can be so cleansing after all that paperwork,” Fir’n Akeina said, pressing her long, mobile hands together. “Don’t you think? I miss the days when my children were young and I could steal a few hours to nurse them or bathe them or just rock them.”

Gersha glanced at Ceill. “I miss that kind of thing, too. It’s good to stay grounded.”

“And you are so grounded, Gersha. You must tell me your secret.” Again Fir’n Akeina clasped her hands in the affected way that made Ceill want to puke. His mom got fake like this sometimes, but only when she wanted to impress somebody.

Who did Fir’n Akeina want to impress? Him? No point. Gersha? Maybe, considering their conversation kept returning to a boring bill that Gersha wanted her to support. Yet, the more Ceill watched Fir’n Akeina, the more he realized she glanced at Tilrey more often than at anyone else. She seemed to check his reaction to everything she said.

Tilrey, meanwhile, treated her in his standard bland, deferential way. The contrast was a little creepy.

When Gersha rose to clear the plates, Tilrey waved him back to his seat. “Let me do that. I’ll be making tea anyway.”

“ _I_ was going to make tea,” Gersha protested.

But Tilrey said, “No, no. Let an expert handle this,” which drew a knowing smile from Fir’n Akeina.

As if she knew anything about them! The whole interaction was a performance. Gersha always served them and brewed the tea except on special occasions like his birthday, when Tilrey insisted on waiting on him. Otherwise, there was never any question that Gersha would handle the household tasks, giving Tilrey a rest after twelve hours a day or more in the Sector.

But Fir’n Akeina expected Tilrey to serve the tea. So for her, they pretended, just like they did when Fir Saldegren came for dinner. Ceill didn’t like it. And he especially didn’t like the way Fir’n Akeina’s cheeks pinked when Tilrey glanced at her, or how she sometimes shot a look at him that was almost pleading, only to drop her eyes.

Fir Saldegren didn’t do that, at least. It reminded Ceill of how he’d felt around Stefan when they first met, but these were _adults_. This was Tilrey. Didn’t he mind how Fir’n Akeina looked at him? Didn’t _Gersha_ mind?

As they waited for the tea to brew, the conversation fell into an awkward lull. Then Fir’n Akeina found a new question to ask Ceill, smiling at him in her too-intense way: “Now, tell me, are you glued to the same stream my son won’t stop talking about? The one about the Upstart boy who gets himself Lowered and becomes a—” she lowered her voice— “a _diversion_?”

Ceill filed away the new euphemism to amuse his friends at the Brothel. High Upstarts seemed to have an endless supply. “Everybody watches it,” he said, trying to sound bored. “I’m not into streams anymore, myself. I’m focused on my studies.”

Gersha laughed in a delighted, natural way. “That’s not what you said last time I found you glued to the cylinder after midnight, or the time before that.”

Fir’n Akeina laughed, too. “The _times_ I’ve practically had to drag Ludo off the couch.”

“It seems harmless, though.”

“Of course!” As usual, Fir’n Akeina was way too eager to show Gersha she agreed with him. “Young people need downtime to amuse themselves. Though, as far as the content of this particular stream, I wonder if it’s a little too titillating.”

“It has a good core message, from what I’ve heard,” Gersha said. “The main character gets Lowered because he stays up all night drinking before a testing day, am I right?”

He shot a glance at Ceill, brow arched in a warning he probably meant to be funny. Ceill didn’t smile.

“That’s right.” Fir’n Akeina seemed to be considering this seriously; maybe she was more of a stream watcher than she liked to admit. “But even that plot line—I mean, our young people are already so anxious about Notification. My poor Ludo.” She shook her head. “The other day he asked me if I would stop speaking to him if he were Lowered. I’m sure it’s the stream that put the idea in his head.”

“ _Would_ you stop speaking to him if he were Lowered?” Tilrey asked, setting the tea tray smoothly down on the table.

It was such a point-blank, almost confrontational question that Ceill expected Fir’n Akeina to take offense. Instead, she blushed and dropped her eyes. “Of course not. No parent would disown a child for that.”

Tilrey said, “I wonder how many high-named parents have been put to the test.”

Fir’n Akeina opened her mouth and shut it again. And it was Gersha who stepped in to smooth things over: “When I was Ceill’s age, my uncle gave me the most terrifying lecture about what would happen if I didn’t make a certain score.”

“You?” Fir’n Akeina looked disbelieving. “But you’re brilliant.”

Tilrey just smiled to himself and poured the tea.

Akeina and Gersha got into a dull conversation about how to improve the testing and Notification system, while Ceill tried to process what he’d just seen.

He’d thought Tilrey was playing the kettle boy for Fir’n Akeina, but a kettle boy didn’t put people on edge. Tilrey had nettled her the way Stefan liked to nettle Ceill, because he knew he could. And she’d taken it in stride.

Weird as that was, it was the part about Ludo that stuck with him. Was Ludo actually worried about the tests? True, Ludo wasn’t a stellar student, either, but if one of them was in danger of being blue-tagged, surely it was Ceill.

He was relieved when the goodbyes were all said and the door sealed shut behind Fir’n Akeina. Watching through a slat in the blinds as her driver scraped sleet off the car’s windshield, he said, “Her son’s a stuck-up prick. And now I see why.”

“Honestly, Ceill,” Gersha said, clearing up the tea things. “She was perfectly pleasant to you.”

Tilrey flopped down on the couch and stretched out. He looked like he’d been holding his breath for hours. “He was polite to her face, sweetheart,” he said to Gersha. “That’s what counts. Backbiting is a way of life in the Sector; he might as well get good at it now.”

“ _I’m_ not good at it, though.” Gersha came back from the kitchen and sat down beside Tilrey. “You know I hate all that.”

Tilrey wrapped an arm around Gersha. “I know, love,” he said tiredly, kissing him on the forehead. “I know.”

Ceill said he needed to study and went to his room to give them their privacy. After this evening, they clearly needed the rest of the night to themselves.

Only later, as he eased open the door of his room to see if it was safe for him to sneak out, did he remember he’d been planning to ask Tilrey’s advice about Stefan.

Oh well. Tilrey was busy with his own plots and schemes, which apparently included encouraging Ludo’s mother to be in love with him. What were the chances he’d be willing to help anyway, or that he wouldn’t see through Ceill’s lies?

Ceill knew what he was doing. He would bring Stefan his sister’s note tonight and see what he said.

***

“You’re quite the little busybody.” Stefan folded the note back up and slid it across the counter of the Brothel suite where Ceill had found him. “Would you mind moving over?” he added. “I have a patron coming in ten minutes, and he wants his tea ready and waiting.”

Ceill watched as Stefan put the kettle on the burner and scooped leaves into the pot. His friend was dressed simply for this appointment, not like a kettle boy as he sometimes was. But he had a touch of liner around his eyes and a hardness to his expression that made Ceill feel like a child.

“Your sister misses you,” he said in a faltering voice. “She’s worried, I think.”

Stefan paused to give Ceill a look that sent chills down Ceill’s spine. “I’m very fond of my sister,” he said. “My parents, too. The last thing I want is for them to worry or think I’m unhappy. But now, thanks to you, I imagine they do.”

Warmth flooded Ceill’s face. He’d known this was a risk, but he hadn’t expected Stefan to act this way, like a cold-eyed enemy. “What if your family could help you, though? What if you could help yourself?” Knowing better than to mention his dad, he gestured around at the suite, with its low lighting and its prominent bed. “You don’t _have_ to do this.”

The kettle began to hiss, and Stefan took it off the burner and let it sit. “I know I don’t have to,” he said. “I want to.”

“But . . .” With a stab of regret in his chest, Ceill remembered how tenderly Stefan had kissed him. Stefan had been so nice that night. Now Ceill felt gangly and out of place, unwanted, his long limbs too big for the kitchenette. “But I thought—I mean, you said . . .”

“I shouldn’t have told you anything.” Stefan poured water into the pot. “I thought you’d appreciate how I’m getting my own back on Lindahl. But all you can think about is making me into a good citizen again, and I imagine my family agrees.”

“It’s not about ‘good.’ It’s about what you want. Your posting—”

“Don’t you see? I don’t want that anymore.” Stefan turned to face Ceill, and the chill was gone from his eyes. They burned. “I don’t want to go back to my old job in the Sector and sit at a desk and follow Strutters’ orders. I’d sooner drink bleach.”

“You don’t have to work in the Sector,” Ceill pointed out. Maybe Stefan was worried he’d have to abandon the stream. “Actors can have all kinds of postings. You could work in the Restaurant, or at the Library, or—”

“No, thanks.” Stefan took hold of Ceill’s shoulder and steered him toward the suite’s back door. “Somebody needs to do this work. Why not me? It may be hard for you to grasp, but I’m freer here than I was out there. I see the things they hide from us. So much that I never even suspected.”

Ceill thought of the scene he’d witnessed at the dinner table. Plenty was hidden from him, too. “There are other ways,” he said, not even sure what he meant.

Tilrey wouldn’t have been like this. When Gersha offered him a way out of being a kettle boy, he hadn’t made objections, had he? He’d wanted nothing more.

Stefan simply shook his head. “I’m fine here, and thanks to the stream, I’ve got power for the first time in my life. I _mean_ something, even if it’s only to kids like you.”

He opened the door and thrust Ceill into the drab back passage that connected the suites—a place for the staff to wash and fetch new clothes and linens between appointments.

“I’ll visit my family soon,” he added in a low voice. “I don’t want them thinking I’m not happy. But you, Ceill—go study for your fucking tests, okay? Be a Strutter. Stop hanging around where you might see stuff you don’t want to.”

And, with a glance toward the door that a patron would open any moment, he stepped back inside and closed this door in Ceill’s face.

***

For once, the night was calm—no icy wind howling around the corners of buildings, no clouds disgorging snow. Ceill took his time walking from the Brothel’s back entrance to the tram stop, pausing to look at the blazing spread of stars.

He wished he were in another solar system or galaxy—anywhere but here. He wished he were somewhere he’d never heard of Stefan Altmering. And he wished it even more intensely when he entered the heated enclosure and found Ludo Akeina.

“Well, hey there.” Ludo sprawled on the bench with legs indolently spread. His tone said he knew exactly where Ceill had been. “Have fun?”

Ceill wanted to turn around and find another tram stop, but that would show weakness. He plunked himself at the opposite end of the bench, grateful they were alone. “My dad asked me to do an errand at the Library.”

Ludo just grinned. He was shivering, like he’d been waiting a while, but it didn’t diminish his smugness. “I followed you from your dad’s place, Ceillsha. I live right across the way from you—do you even know that? No, I guess you wouldn’t. Anyway, I’ve been with you the whole way. I wonder what your dad would think if he knew you were hanging at the Sanctioned. What’re you doing there, anyway—buying sap? Making friends with whores?”

Ceill had been dreading something like this since his first time sneaking out, but now he felt nothing. His heart beat calmly; his breathing was even. After the way Stefan had pushed him out of the suite, after the way Stefan had said _thanks to you,_ nothing Ludo could do mattered.

“I’d rather hang out with whores than with your crowd,” he said. “More fun. Anyway, you seem pretty convinced I’m whorespawn, so they and I should have a lot in common.”

Ludo looked taken aback, but only for a second. “You’re about to take your tests and be _Notified_.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless you don’t care about being Raised? Maybe you’d rather live in the Brothel and suck cock all day?” When Ceill didn’t react, he hissed, “Like your real dad?”

In a distant way, Ceill knew Ludo felt very brave for saying this. He could sense the other boy tensing in expectation of an explosion of righteous anger.

But he wasn’t angry. All he could think about was the yearning way Ludo’s mom had looked at Tilrey at dinner. If Ludo had seen that, he would have been mortified. Maybe he _had_ seen something similar. Maybe that was one reason he was here, dogging Ceill’s steps.

“My dad never worked in the Brothel,” he said. “But the people who do? They’re not ashamed. You’re the one making it shameful by treating them like things.”

Ludo rolled his eyes. “Go right on telling yourself that. All I know is, _I_ went there as a patron. That’s my birthright. But it’s not yours, is it?”

Something unexpected sprouted inside Ceill—pity. He was grateful he hadn’t spent the evening the way Ludo had, shivering on this bench. He’d failed to help Stefan and been rebuked for his pains, but at least he’d tried to help. He hadn’t wasted his time on a hateful obsession.

Leaving Ludo’s insulting question hanging, he said, “Well, now you know where I’ve been. What are you going to do about it?”

There was a hint of confusion on Ludo’s face as he turned to watch the tram wheeze up to the platform, its tubular steel body steaming under the guardlights. “What do _you_ think I’m going to do?”

“Want me to beg you not to tell?” Ceill got up, eager to board. If he sat up front by the driver, Ludo wouldn’t dare talk to him on the way home. Though his fear of Ludo had evaporated, he wasn’t enjoying this. “Or are you hoping I’ll offer you something in return for keeping your trap shut?”

His schoolmate sneered. “You think you have anything I want?”

“I dunno. You seem pretty interested in pissing me off.” Ceill strode to the edge of the platform as the tram’s door unsealed. With a last, cold glance back at his schoolmate, he said, “Tell the whole world, Ludo. Knock yourself out. I don’t give a shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is approaching a climax of sorts! Promise! And I believe that climax is the very long next chapter that I drafted last weekend.
> 
> Also, the little digression about hackers is going to be relevant—I think? I hope? :)


	17. The Great Sap Heist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It may not be a monster chapter, but it is long, and it's also the climax of Ceill's storyline, more or less. This is the first heist I've ever written, and nothing gets stolen so maybe it's not technically a heist, let alone a "great heist," but whatever. ;) Thanks for reading! <3 We're a few chapters from the end now.

The narrow valley hidden between the steeps of Mount Eisha and Mount Kantjen was a whirl of white. Only the green beacons of the two guard towers on the east side, shining blearily through dark and storm, revealed that the Sanctioned Sweetbush was there at all.

Bors was glad he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, because his stomach was awhirl like the snow. After more than two ten-days of practice and preparations, they were actually going to breach the government’s sap plantation. It was his idea, the dream he’d been toiling for years to realize, but now the time had come, all he could think about was what could go wrong.

“What if we can’t see the signal?” he asked Aleks, who perched on a stout pine branch above his head, training a pair of binoculars on the nearest guard tower. All seven of them were gathered at the eastern end of the valley where the thicket shielded them from surveillance, not that camouflage was necessary in this whiteout.

“I’ll see it,” Aleks said with infuriating calm. “The storm’s passing on to the south.”

Someone touched Bors’s forearm through the thick parka—Valgund. “I’m scared shitless,” the botanist said, leaning in so the Northmen wouldn’t hear them. “Action? Sabotage? Not my thing.”

Action wasn’t Bors’s thing, either. Knowing he wasn’t the only one with jitters steadied him, and he was glad he wasn’t the one who’d admitted he was scared. “Deep breaths,” he advised, hoping he never had to tell Valgund about the pistol and the two cyanide tablets in his pack.

He’d gotten one for himself because he never wanted to be an Int/Sec prisoner, and one for Valgund in case he felt the same. With any luck, they’d pull this plan off, but you never knew.

“Good idea.” Valgund turned to address Lasha and Bronia, who stood nearby dressed, like all of them, in off-white parkas and coveralls and strapped up with utility packs. “Remember our checklist.” He raised his eyes to include Aleks. “Go to your designated row and work your way left to right until you meet your partner. Inject the full contents of each syringe. If you encounter any guards or staffers, tell them what we practiced. Whatever you do . . .”

Aleks finished for him: “Do _not_ panic. Don’t use any weapon, including a stunner, unless you’re about to be taken.”

Lasha and Bronia nodded stolidly. Together with Aleks and Valgund, they would do the actual injection of the trees while Bors manned the scrambler and Janta and Vasha, the silver-braided woman, stood guard outside.

Over the past two ten-days, Bors had developed a healthy respect for each Northman’s skills and their smooth functioning as a team. Engaged in smuggling and wall breaking since their teens, they had nerves of steel, yet they weren’t careless or foolhardy. Lasha and Bronia, who both had greenhouse-farming experience, had easily picked up Valgund’s lesson on injecting the trees. As for Aleks, he seemed able to learn anything he set his mind to.

But Janta was the crucial piece. “Where’s Janta?” Bors called fretfully up to Aleks. “Can you see him?”

Aleks swept his binoculars over the broad strip of treeless snow between them and the enclosure. Somewhere in there was a trap door leading to the underground generator that powered the electrified fencing on top of the concrete wall—or so Janta claimed.

“He’ll be out in a moment,” Aleks said, “and then he’ll be ready on my signal. I’ve never met a fence or a wall that kid couldn’t unfang.”

Bors tried to share Aleks’s easy confidence, but he liked Janta the least of the lot. No more than eighteen, with filthy brown hair braided into a snarl, the boy hardly ever spoke, and then in an impenetrable accent. Janta was the offspring of addicts, Aleks had told Bors, reared in Thurskein’s lawless depths, where he’d managed to avoid formal schooling.

While his peers were learning square roots, the boy had somehow snuck into the city’s few semi-accessible terminals and hacked parts of its network. Admiring this natural talent, Aleks had taken Janta under his wing and turned him into an outlaw at an age when most kids were building snow forts.

The Int/Sec elite dismissed rogue hackers as disorganized riffraff, but Bors firmly believed they were one of the greatest threats to the Republic. While Hargists and other Dissidents had ideological debates to keep them busy, code monkeys went right ahead and sold themselves to the highest bidder. Someday one of them might find a patron who was more dangerous than your average underworld kingpin. The only solution was to keep Drudges—particularly clever Drudges—far away from screens.

But Janta hadn’t been kept away from screens, and now everything depended on this criminal prodigy’s ability to neutralize the fence. Well, on him and the whores.

The snow was starting to thin. Bors made out the spear of the nearest guard tower where the east wall of the enclosure met the south one. A pinprick of laser light, aimed at the dark window from inside, was what they were all waiting for.

Two whores from the military base, who claimed to be popular with the Sweetbush guards, would disable the watchers in the towers with flasks of moonshine spiked with vexonil. They’d assured Aleks the whole thing would be no problem. But Aleks had a way of inspiring people to promise him whatever he wanted, and Bors hoped these two hadn’t overpromised.

Much as he enjoyed watching Aleks work, it killed Bors not to be able to oversee and control every aspect of the operation. Those whores, for instance. If only he could have vetted them! He’d always done his best work alone.

He sank to his knees, slipped the pack from his shoulders, and checked the settings of his precious scrambler. The moment the guards were out of commission, he would be ready to jam the frequency. It was frustrating to know that was _all_ he could do, but it was something.

Valgund’s hand rested on his shoulder. “We’re ready for this, Bors,” he said, low and intimate. “Don’t worry.”

_I’m not worrying!_ But Bors held his tongue. The weight of that hand and the vibration of that voice went straight to his head like a shot of strong liquor, unknotting the tension in his chest.

Since the night when Valgund first showed him the Sweetbush, he hadn’t dared try to rekindle the brief intimacy they’d shared. The Northmen were usually in the way, and anyway, it didn’t seem likely that a Linnett would want a wretched scrap of a Drudge-born as anything but a diversion. Still, watching the easy way that Aleks and Lasha touched each other, Bors couldn’t help feeling a lick of envy. They’d been in love since they were boys. Imagine feeling so safe with someone . . .

“Don’t _you_ worry,” he shot back. As long as Valgund was a little more nervous than he was, he’d be fine. Maybe he didn’t always do his best work alone, after all.

From the tree came a low whistle. Aleks called, “Signal spotted, northeast corner. Positions, everyone.”

Bors hoisted his pack and checked his harness, prepared for the climb over the wall. He didn’t like heights, but they’d practiced the maneuver in an isolated spot with Valgund belaying him and vice versa.

From her post in a neighboring tree, Vasha called, “Janta sighted! He’s ready to kill the fence on our signal.”

Aleks grinned with the satisfaction of a craftsman observing a job well done. “Tell him we’re just waiting on the southeast tower.”

Vasha used a flurry of hand signals to communicate with the boy in the field. Then they all went still, waiting. Snow filtered through the trees in fat, lazy flakes and melted on Bors’s upper lip. He didn’t wipe it away; the pinpricks of cold kept him focused. Between the boughs, the black sky was turgid with clouds. An owl hooted.

Aleks’s second whistle sliced the air, so sharp Bors winced. “Signal spotted, southeast corner. Tell Janta it’s a go.”

Their leader slithered down the rough pine trunk and landed agilely in the snow between Bors and Lasha, securing his own pack as he regained his balance. “Bors, it’s a go for you, too.”

With numb fingers, Bors used his remote to activate the scrambler. In theory, he could do his whole part from outside the wall, but it was safer to stay close to the signal’s source. Anyway, he reminded himself with a glance at Valgund, he wanted to be with the others while they injected the trees, standing watch. He couldn’t not be there.

He flashed Aleks a thumbs-up.

“Scrambler’s a go!” With a broad arm motion, Aleks ushered them out into the snowfield.

The first step out of the forest cover set Bors’s heart pounding, though he knew their images wouldn’t appear on the monitors. He shuddered at each imprint his boots made in the virgin snow. But Valgund ran straight into the whiteness as if he weren’t afraid anymore, and Bors had to keep up.

He’d already betrayed his oaths to Int/Sec a thousand times over. Now he had to make something good come of this wretched little life of his.

He heaved a ragged breath and launched himself across the snowfield at the wall.

***

Billiards was another one of the useless things Ceill was good at. He’d just decided. He bent low over the table, calculating the trajectory of the ball with the red stripes, then gave the solid black ball the lightest tap with his cue.

The “tap” wasn’t as light as intended. The striped ball ricocheted off the rim of the table, just shy of the pocket, and rocketed back to the center. The surrounding boys groaned.

Ansha, who’d taught Ceill to play this game an hour or so ago, slapped him on the back. “C’mon, lad! Just focus. You were doing so well.”

One of the spectators asked, “Sorry you bet on him now?”

Ansha was betting on him? Betting what? Ceill stood up, hoping to clear his head.

His vision blurred, then sharpened to reveal the patrons’ lounge of the Brothel, a chaos of noise and movement. Track lights glared over the bar, and the whole place was strung with winking pinpricks of bronze and amethyst. The booths on the walls were crowded with boys in casual clothes, drinking and chatting, many of them accompanied by older men. It had been nearly empty when he arrived, and so much quieter.

How much time had passed? Trying to rest the cue against the table, he swept something off it that shattered loudly on the floor.

More groans. Laughter. “He’s busting up the place now!”

“Broken glass! Get a broom!”

Ceill looked down, head spinning, at the remains of the whiskey-and-soda Ansha had given him. It had spattered his trousers. He knelt and tried to pick up the shards, but a boy in an apron bustled him aside, wielding a broom and mop with professional efficiency. “Better be careful, young Fir.”

In the crowd, somebody muttered, “The kellthavina boy’s wrecked.”

That was when Ceill understood just how drunk he was. If he weren’t drunker than he’d ever been in his life, he wouldn’t still be here when the evening was in full swing. The boys in their tight T-shirts and loose trousers were busy mingling with older men in tunics, working while pretending to amuse themselves. Most of their patrons were Upstarts from the Sector, people who might recognize Ceill even without his school uniform.

No, he shouldn’t be here. But where else was he going to go? The stream wasn’t shooting tonight, Stefan was busy with patrons, and Kai and Einara were busy with other things, possibly each other. No one but Ansha had time for Ceill. The steward had brought him here promising a distraction, and the whiskey and billiards table had delivered.

Ceill could go home, of course. _Should_ go home. But if he went home, he would have to think about the fact that the quantitative part of the E-Squareds was tomorrow morning.

He’d prepared enough for the damned test. He’d spent the past eighteen _years_ preparing. Tomorrow his fate would be decided, and he was fucked if he’d spend the whole evening fretting about it.

He lurched back against Ansha. “Wanna finish the game.”

The steward steadied him. “Maybe it’s time to call it a draw, Ceillsha? Serious drinking and billiards don’t mix.”

“I’m not drinking seriously.” Ceill looked around for the whiskey and remembered why his trousers were wet. Carefully pronouncing each word, he added, “I don’t even have a drink.”

Ansha made some sort of signal to Ceill’s scowling opponent, who put down his cue and headed for the bar. Then the steward grabbed Ceill’s elbow in a firm hold and led him to a bench on the far wall. “Get your bearings, kiddo. I’ll bring you a weak one and some water.”

“Strong one,” Ceill protested. He slumped gratefully onto the bench, the room compressing and expanding around him with each breath. Boys close to his age were everywhere, shouting and shoving and flirting and gossiping. It was like his dormpod, except nobody shot him dirty looks. Here he wasn’t afraid of anyone—except maybe the patrons, and why did he have to give a fuck about a bunch of arrogant old men?

But he couldn’t go home. No. He shut his eyes and saw the ocean-blue surface of the billiard table. While he was playing, he’d been blissfully focused on just that, the way he was on skis or a climbing wall. He’d forgotten his future and his failed attempt to help Stefan and Ludo’s threat to expose his secret life.

He groaned as it all came flooding back. If Ludo’s threat hadn’t panned out yet, that was probably just because Ludo wanted to torture Ceill before he delivered the coup de grâce.

Or maybe Ludo was waiting to see how Ceill’s tests came out. If he got Lowered, what was the point of hurting him any more than he’d already hurt himself?

Ceill was _not_ like Darius, who’d partied away his schooldays and showed up hungover and unprepared on the morning of the test. He’d studied, he’d worried, he’d made promises to Gersha, he’d _tried_. Just this one night, though, he would relax. He would be a little Darius for once.

He opened his eyes into the light and noise and took the drink Ansha handed him. “This better be a strong one.”

***

“C’mon, c’mon,” Valgund muttered, his pulse spiking.

He stood perched atop the ten-meter-high concrete wall of the complex, straddling a wire that usually carried 5,000 volts, battered by snow and wind that made it tough to see anything. He couldn’t lose his focus on the ropes and the self-braking belay device. Bors, who dangled from those ropes, was flailing halfway up, unable to find stable footing on the wall.

_C’mon! Pull yourself up!_ Valgund bit his lip. He’d learned during their practices that shouting instructions at Bors just made him more likely to lose his grip.

Bors needed to remember his climbing lessons, and soon. Lasha had already scaled the wall and belayed both Aleks and Bronia. While the other two slid down their ropes on the far side, she stood beside Valgund unbuckling her gear.

_You okay_? she mouthed at him through the flying snow.

He nodded, and Bronia disappeared after Aleks and Lasha, shimmying easily down into the enclosure. Below, Valgund could make out the forms of the two men slipping on their snowshoes to proceed to their designated sections of trees.

They had forty minutes to an hour before somebody noticed something amiss and turned on the damn fence. Injecting the trees, assuming everyone remembered their training and nothing went wrong, would take thirty of those. And they needed to disattach the ropes and bring them along, just in case.

He tugged on the rope, reminding Bors he was there. Bors had his boots braced on the wall now, but he couldn’t seem to heave himself any farther.

“My fingers!” he called up in a frantic whisper. “So numb.”

Had he forgotten to use the hand warmers? A shiver of panic gripped Valgund’s shoulders, and he pulled as hard as he could on the rope attached to Bors’s harness. “Go limp! I’ll pull you up.”

No matter how hard he pulled, Bors’s dead weight barely moved. Valgund collapsed against the two lines of wires, panting and sweaty inside his parka and thermals.

By itself, his non-dominant right arm wasn’t strong enough to haul Bors, but he needed to keep his left hand on the braking device, just in case. Or did he dare let it go? This wasn’t a mountain; Bors wouldn’t fall that far . . .

No. He couldn’t risk dashing his friend’s brains out against the concrete. He called down, “I’m going to lower you. You don’t have to be in here with us.”

At first, Bors hung limp in the harness, rubbing his gloved hands and offering no objection. But when Valgund began letting out the slack in the rope, he shook his head wildly. “Wait! Not without me!”

Before Valgund could point out that he’d become a liability, Bors was climbing. He seized the rope and yanked himself hand over hand, boots scrabbling up the concrete.

Had he found a second wind, or was it sheer cussedness? Valgund barely breathed. He focused on taking in the slack he’d just let out—and then more, and more. _You can do it,_ he prayed silently, his whole body tingling with the strain of staying still.

When Bors was a yard from the top, it was all Valgund could do not to drag him the rest of the way by main force. He waited until he could reach out and grab Bors’s gloved hand. Then he wrapped both arms around the slender form and heaved him onto the narrow ledge.

They stood that way, both panting. Valgund could swear he felt the boom of Bors’s heart through their parkas. “It’s okay,” he said, lowering his head to press his cheek to Bors’s. Through the loose knit of their balaclavas, which exposed only their eyes, he felt stubble and warmth.

“Told you I could do it,” Bors said.

Valgund gave his friend a clumsy, no-contact kiss, then laughed and pushed him away. The stress was making him punch drunk; he needed to stay as calm as Aleks was.

“So you did,” he said, ducking gingerly under the dead wires and motioning Bors to do the same. “Hang on tight; it’s easier on the way down.”

***

A hot tub outdoors on the terrace, surrounded by ice and snow. It was the stupidest thing Ceill had ever heard of, and the most magical.

When a nameless boy unsealed the heavy door at the back of the lounge and ushered him outside, finger pressed to sly lips, Ceill thought the Brothel staff was playing a prank on him. Then he saw the steam rising from the tub and the boys luxuriating in it—a bubble of warmth floating high above the frozen city. And before he even knew what he was doing, he set down his drink and tore off most of his clothes and joined them.

“We’re only supposed to be out here with patrons,” the sly-faced boy told Ceill, some time later—time was flexible now. “But I guess _you’re_ not worried about getting caught.”

No, Ceill wasn’t scared. He grinned cockily without a word, then leaned back on the edge of the tub, breathing in delicious steam, and tried to listen to the boy on his other side chattering about a ski race he’d watched on the cylinder this afternoon. That boy was a friend of Stefan’s—Onyx? Garnet? Something like that.

Ceill nodded, pretending to pay attention, but his head was so heavy. The viscous water blanketed his limbs in blissful heat that made him drowsy. Only the astringence of the chlorine kept him alert.

He nabbed his drink from the icy tiles—fifth drink? No, fourth. The spilled one didn’t count. The cold liquor slid down his throat and kindled an answering heat in his chest. The sky was clear, the stars the brightest and most beautiful things he’d ever seen. More beautiful than his mother’s smile. More beautiful even than Stefan’s long-lashed eyes.

The memory of Stefan’s kiss made the stars blur, and Ceill closed his eyes and swooned back into the sensation. Maybe he shouldn’t have stopped Stefan from taking things further. If he was going to lose everything, if he couldn’t help Stefan or himself, he at least deserved some joy, didn’t he?

Water churned—his neighbor getting up. Somebody else, too. Ceill inched away from the splashing, suddenly conscious of dead silence around him.

He opened his eyes.

He was alone in the water, shivering in an icy wind he hadn’t noticed before, looking straight at a pair of boots poised on the tub’s rim.

Women’s boots. His gaze traveled up the slender form to find a familiar face. Despite the dark, it was easy to imagine the glare of her ice-blue eyes.

“Oh, hey, Einara.” He couldn’t seem to separate his words properly, but he was always happy to see her. “You should come in. It’s nice.”

Einara unfolded an enormous towel and held it open. She said in a voice much colder than the wind, “Get up this instant and come inside, Ceill Linnett. Or I call your father—both of them.”

***

Bors’s job was both the easiest and the worst, he decided. While Aleks, Lasha, Bronia, and Valgund were busy injecting the rows of trees, all he had to do was maintain the scrambler settings and wait to climb back over that fucking wall.

He could do it. He had to.

The storm had calmed to flurries, just as Aleks had forecast, so at least the wind wouldn’t be constantly ripping at his parka and trying to tear the rope from his hands. Bors had spearheaded this mission. He would _not_ be the weak link that got them all caught.

He massaged a fresh pair of hand warmers, fisting and unfisting his hands to keep the fingers limber. He stamped his feet in the powder and studied what he could see of the complex.

As they’d hoped, it was desolate at night. A multiwinged building that was probably the sap factory hunched at the west end of the enclosure, its roofs rising above the rows of dark, stubby trees. The bunkerlike outbuildings might be staff dorms, but they stood at a good distance from him, and most of their windows were dark.

Bors paced his stretch of wall, from southeast to northeast corner. From down here, the guard towers looked impossibly high, needles of light riding the gloom, each with a single window offering a 360 view. He strained his eyes but saw no movement inside, no light except a bluish glow of monitors that reminded him of the Blinding Tank.

The guards assigned to those towers must be bored out of their minds. Day after day, night after night, they flicked their eyes between the windows and the monitors, watching for intruders who never arrived. As Bors had explained to Aleks and the others, drawing on his professional experience, this was token surveillance of an installation that no one expected to defend. Outers lacked the firepower to attack; Dissidents, the intel and the organization.

Until now.

Not that Bors was a Dissident, of course. He simply wanted to clear the Republic’s head. Kai might not understand that, but Valgund did, and Valgund had pulled Bors the last few inches up the wall and held him for an instant at the top. Bors still felt that brief embrace and the thud of Valgund’s pulse against his—relief, or something more?

He felt for the men in the towers. They’d invited company over for a break in the boredom, and the company had fed them a drug that knocked them out. They were missing the first exciting thing that had happened here in years, perhaps decades. He hoped they woke up none the wiser. With any luck, they wouldn’t even bother to rewind the footage.

He couldn’t just wait and think about that wall. The sheer, merciless expanse of concrete, the wires at the top . . . maybe Valgund was right. Maybe it would have been safer for them all if he’d stayed on the other side.

As he paced, he searched for unnatural fissures in the snow, signs of a stairway or door built into the earth. The generator probably wasn’t the only subterranean installation. In fact, knowing what he did about government architecture, Bors would have been amazed if there weren’t a network of tunnels under his feet.

He needed some way to pass the time.

***

The first few steps inside the complex were the worst. Painfully exposed, striding toward a cluster of concrete bunkers with the wall looming behind him, Valgund imagined searchlights and targeting systems pinning him at any second.

Then the furry black boughs of the muirthorn pines closed over his head, and he breathed normally again.

Muirthorns were dwarf pines, all gnarled boughs and vicious needles. These were elders of their species, though, some twice his height or more. He couldn’t move among them without a certain mystical awe. Their sharp, clean scent pervaded the air; their needles littered the snow. When a light wind blew, revealing stars among the clouds, the boughs rushed like surf on a barren shore.

Valgund wasted no time. He’d practiced the delicate operation of injection until all the steps were automatic. Before he knew it, he was on his tenth tree, the vigorous work keeping him warm.

He tugged off his gloves, plucked a fresh reservoir from the pouch on his belt, and flicked on his headlamp. By its light, he drilled a tiny hole in the base of the trunk. Inserted the injection port, attached the reservoir, pushed the plunger.

It took only a minute or so for the reservoir to empty; you didn’t need much _Rhizoctonia muirthorni_ to alter a muirthorn’s metabolism. While the fungus wouldn’t injure the tree, it would place it in a sort of hibernation, delaying the flow of sap for as long as a decade.

Valgund’s fingers were tacky with the stuff—the life-blood of the tree, drawn ruthlessly year after year by human beings greedy for its narcotic properties. According to Feudal legend, sap belonged to the snowy owls; it was they who discovered and guarded it, sharing it with humans only as a gift or a curse. In the sagas, sap brought blissful reveries, but also prophetic visions and madness. How had his people turned it into a mere stress reliever?

And how would they react when their most reliable unit of currency vanished?

Lost in these thoughts and his work, Valgund lost track of his surroundings, too. He knew he was working his way back to Aleks, whom he would meet at the end of the row. But the trees grew close together, hiding the others and making him feel alone.

When a loud, unfamiliar voice spoke from the other end—“Hey, whatcha doing?”—he was so startled he dropped the injector.

A female figure in an off-white parka strode toward him, her face swaddled like his own. Not Bronia. Taller, official-looking, with a rifle on her hip.

Terror weighed on Valgund’s chest wall. He turned to see the tiny hole in the snow where his injector had disappeared. All he could think of was the moment when he’d warned Bors he wasn’t a man of action.

They could send him back to moral rehab for this. They could exile him.

Trying to rise from his knees, he wobbled and nearly fell. The woman darted to his side and guided him upright. “You okay, doc? Been out here too long?”

_Doc._ She thought he was a staff scientist. Valgund drew a ragged breath and remembered everything he and Bors had practiced. “Kinda, yeah. But the stock needs another dose of pesticide.” He kept his voice friendly and casual.

“Yeah?” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s late.”

“We were planning on finishing earlier. But, the storm.” Valgund spread his hands.

The sex workers at the base had given Aleks a few tidbits of intel gleaned from the complex guards. Valgund had paid close attention.

“You know what a pisser Tavastin is,” he said, trying hard to sound annoyed rather than pants-shitting scared. “If something’s on the schedule, it’s gotta be done in twenty-four, weather or no weather.”

The guard’s eyes relaxed. Maybe she even smiled under her balaclava. “She rides you hard, too, huh?”

“Like a champ.” Valgund smiled back weakly. _Please leave. We’re running out of time._ He dropped to his knees again and jammed bare fingers in the snow, searching for that damn injector.

“You drop something?” The guard pawed snow away with her mitten, revealing the nub of metal. “Hey,” she added confidentially, leaning closer, “just FYI, we have a fence malfunction. Probably a software issue. Fvankar’s gonna juice it back up, so if you hear any weird noises up there . . .” She shrugged. “We’re just keeping you safe.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.” Valgund smiled again, his blood running cold.

“I live to serve, Fir.” With a comical salute, the guard trudged back down the row of trees.

For an endless moment, Valgund’s brain and muscles refused to budge. Then, above and all around him, he heard the hiss of the fence coming back to life.

***

Ceill didn’t sober up till he was parked on the hard bench of the tram stop with Kai beside him. The streammaker eyed him with repressed fury.

After Einara hustled Ceill indoors and into his clothes, she’d forced him to drink a gigantic tumbler of water. Then she’d sent for Kai and ordered him to “make sure the boy goes straight home.”

Kai clearly didn’t enjoy playing nanny. “I said I’m _sorry_ ,” Ceill said for the eighth or ninth time. “I know I wasn’t supposed to be there. But I can get home by myself, okay? You can go back to whatever you were doing.”

Kai’s jaw was set. “Gonna watch you get on the right tram.”

“I was just having fun.” Einara had never seemed to mind before when Ceill wandered around the Brothel, mingling with the staff. It must be the possibility of patrons spotting him in the lounge that upset her. “Nobody saw me, I swear. I was careful.”

“Yeah, so careful you couldn’t walk straight.” Kai kept looking daggers at Ceill, lip curling. He was _pissed._ “Damn that Ansha—he must’ve thought it would be fun to see you soused. Einara’s giving him a piece of her mind right now.”

Ceill’s cheeks burned. He hated the glare of the fluorescents and the sharp corners of the bench and the lucid patch in his brain that was rapidly expanding, pushing the hazy drunkenness to the margins. “Ansha shouldn’t get blamed. I’m an adult now. If I want to take risks—”

“Risks like throwing your entire life away?”

Ceill swallowed, his stomach roiling. “What are you talking about? I—”

Kai’s look stopped him dead. “You think I don’t know what happens tomorrow? I grew up with Strutters, Ceill. I know the test starts every year bright and early on the last fifth-day of February. You think this was Einara’s idea? When we heard where you were, I was the one who told her to get you the fuck out of that den of sin and home to bed.”

Den of sin? Kai wanted him to score well on the E-Squareds? Ceill blinked against the light, trying to understand. “But . . . Darius,” he managed.

“Darius, right. I was Darius, more or less.” Kai’s eyes still glittered with that strange rage. “I thought I was too good to give a fuck about the test, and you know what happened to me.”

“You’re always making fun of me. Talking about what a sheltered little Strutter brat I am.” Tears pricked Ceill’s eyes; he couldn’t seem to control himself. “Maybe I don’t want to be sheltered, Kai. Maybe I want to be like you or Stefan or Aleks Snowblind, making my own way in life.”

Kai snorted. “Fuck that, Ceill. Making my own way meant spending years on my knees in the Brothel. The last thing I want is for you to be like me. And I bet if you asked your Northman friend, crazy as he is, he wouldn’t want you to be like him, either.”

Ceill wished Aleks were here to take his side. “He’d want me to do what _I_ want. He’s always talking about self-determination.”

“Verdant fucking hells, Ceill.” Kai sprang to his feet, paced a few steps, and stopped. “It takes a really smart kid to be as stupid as you’re being. Right now you could have the world on a platter. Go and ace your test and get Raised, and _then_ come back to the studio and learn how to shoot streams. Come back to the Brothel for your R and R. We’ll never shut the doors to you— _unless_ you’re dumb enough to give up the power you were born into.”

“Power isn’t a birthright.”

A harsh laugh. “It may not be a birthright, but it’s an advantage. I know what I’m talking about, Ceill.”

“But I don’t want to work in the Sector.” Ceill knew he was whining, but he couldn’t stop. Maybe Aleks _would_ be on Kai’s side. “I don’t want to do what my parents do. I want to do what you do.”

“And you can. Power, Ceill.” Kai’s eyes narrowed. “The power to do what you want, when you want. Whether you like it or not, you’ll have that as a Strutter, and you won’t have it as a Drudge.”

“I don’t _want_ that kind of power.” Ceill thought of what Stefan had said about seeing things as they really were. “I want to live . . . outside of rules.”

“Right. And being a Strutter will give you the power to decide whether you want to live by the rules, or just pretend to live by the rules and follow your own path instead.”

Ceill remembered his great-grandfather, pretending to follow the rules while leading an unspeakable secret life. “I don’t want to have power and abuse it. I’d rather not have it at all.”

“Verdant. Hells. There are more than two choices!” Kai paced again, as if he couldn’t contain his fury in stillness. “You can have power and do _good_ with it, Ceill. That’s exactly what your dad does.”

Until recently, Ceill would have agreed without hesitation. Now he thought of his conversation with Gersha about Stefan, of Gersha’s faltering efforts to help, and said, “He tries.”

“You can try, too! You can do better than he did. You have a chance to help _us_ , Ceill. To be an advocate for us someday.”

When their eyes met this time, Kai’s gaze stripped away all Ceill’s layers of self-protection. Ceill wanted to look away. He wanted to explain about Ludo, who might have the power to get him blue-tagged no matter what he did. He wanted to strike a nihilist pose and say none of his choices mattered.

Deep down, though, he knew it wasn’t true. His three parents had spent their whole lives preparing him for this. They weren’t going to let Ludo get in the way, because they knew what Kai knew: It was better to have power. Always.

Aleks knew it, too. He freely admitted he benefited from the power of his Upstart father.

“I want to help you,” Ceill admitted. “All of you. Einara. Stefan.”

“You could help us. You could help yourself.” Kai shook his head, mouth twisting. Then he reached down and clapped Ceill on the back. “You can beat that fucking test, kid. So go do it. Do it because . . . if you do what I did when I was your age, if you throw it all away, I’ll never speak to you again.”

***

Valgund ran.

A gigantic press was squeezing the air from his lungs, leaving him lightheaded. He ran headlong between the rows of trees, aiming for the edge of the plantation. He reached the open and realized Aleks was in the opposite direction.

What did it matter? With the fence electrified, there was no way out. They were going to be rounded up, and after that it would be everyone for themselves.

Without thinking, he ran toward where he’d left Bors. Maybe the guard would do him the favor of reappearing so he could surrender to her.

Two thoughts kept him warm as he floundered across the dark expanse of snow, his heart battering his ribs: First, what they’d done to the pines couldn’t be undone. Second, maybe he’d see his friend a last time.

Aleks didn’t seem like the type to sit around waiting to surrender. Maybe he’d want them to climb the wall and let the fence take them out in a blaze of glory. It might be the only way to avoid spilling all the Northmen’s secrets, whatever those were.

Valgund shuddered convulsively and nearly tripped. If he died that way, it would devastate his mother and sister. Why hadn’t it occurred to him, the whole time they were planning this, that Bors’s “mission” might be every bit as suicidal as what he and Garsha had done?

He hadn’t been thinking straight, that was why. Bored and lonely, he’d let himself be seduced.

“Valgund!” The voice was muffled.

Valgund skidded to a stop, but he didn’t see a soul. The call had come from . . . beneath him?

When a hand gripped his ankle and tugged, he barely stifled a scream. He kicked out and shook himself free. Bors’s alarmed voice shrilled, “It’s me! Down here!”

Bors was standing neck-deep in a hole in the ground. Why was there a hole in the ground? Time had slowed down, allowing Valgund to register the soft plop of each snowflake on his face. He wasn’t sure anymore if he were awake or dreaming.

Then he turned and saw Aleks, Bronia, and Lasha barreling toward them from the pine plantation. “Go!” Aleks yelled, waving at him.

_We can’t go anywhere. The fence . . ._ But he couldn’t speak, and anyway they’d probably heard it reactivate, too.

“C’mon, Valgund!” Bors’s shout was strangled to a whisper. “It’s a way out, but we don’t have much time!”

Valgund didn’t believe it. But as the others caught up, he saw in their frantic faces that they believed Bors’s magical exit was real, and that snapped him out of his trance. He followed Bors’s beckoning hand.

The hole was a trapdoor with stairs leading down. Bors must have found it under the snow and gotten it open.

Valgund hurried down the steps and found himself at the dark mouth of a tunnel. The others followed, Lasha yanking the trapdoor closed behind them.

“Go, go!” Bors yelled ahead of them in the blackness. “I tapped into their comms and heard something about checking the wiring in the generator shack. They could be on our heels.”

Breathless as they already were, they ran. The tunnel was pitch black, but it was hard to get lost in a space no wider than an arm span. After bumping into someone or someones, Valgund guided himself with one hand on the wall. He bruised his shin on several hard objects but kept going.

He tried to pace himself. The others’ pounding footsteps unnerved him, though, reverberating off floor and walls and ceiling till he lost his sense of direction. If only he could find Bors—

Then, without warning, fluorescent light flooded the tunnel, and he saw everything with merciless clarity.

The tunnel had curved, almost imperceptibly. Valgund could no longer see the entrance, but he heard distant voices echoing from that direction. A glance the other way told him they wouldn’t have time to get out before their pursuers rounded the curve and spotted them.

Time slowed down again.

Still blinking, the glare bursting in his corneas like fireworks, Valgund watched Aleks yank open a door and jam Lasha and Bronia into it. It was some kind of electrical closet, no room for them all. Aleks gestured wildly at Valgund, mouthing words that made no sense—until Valgund spotted the massive cart sitting just down the tunnel, bristling with wires and other equipment.

Was there room? Just maybe. In the strange twilight of this slow-time state, Valgund seized hold of Bors’s wrist and tackled him to the floor.

Bors, at least, was on the small side. Valgund stuffed his friend under the cart and tried to roll under it himself, but the pack didn’t fit. He tore it off and stowed it on a shelf, then slithered underneath, groaning as the cart pinned his shoulders and hips to the floor.

Squeezed together, they scarcely breathed. Valgund pulled his long legs in, praying Aleks had secured himself with the others. All he could do now was wait as voices and footsteps approached.

The voices were laughing. Two men and a woman. Valgund couldn’t focus on what they were saying: something about a card game, a bet, vials lost and won.

He tried to make his breathing soft and even, but his heart beat like a wrecking ball. He didn’t know where the strangers were, whether they’d already passed or were chatting idly right beside his hiding place. They couldn’t possibly not hear his tortured breaths. They’d see his pack.

His hip throbbed, and one of his hands was pinned under his body at a painful angle. His wrist was going numb. He couldn’t stay here—

Then a small, bare hand seized his own and held tight. Fingers rubbed his.

The hand’s grip was so fierce, so determined, that Valgund almost forgot his terror. He closed his eyes and focused on the grip and nothing else, remembering how tightly Garsha had held his hand long ago as they shivered together in their makeshift shelter in the Wastes. _I’m here. I won’t leave you._

Tears pressed on his lids, and his breathing hitched and relaxed. He could hear the voices and footsteps retreating, past them now and headed for the exit. He squeezed the hand back. _I won’t leave you, either._

The voices faded to nothing. A click, and darkness blanketed the tunnel again. Bors whispered, “Let’s go.”

They wasted no time. Valgund remembered at the last second to grab his pack, fumbling it down from the cart. In the dark, trudging along beside the others, he somehow found Bors’s hand again.

Before, it had felt like Garsha’s, but now he knew the determination was all Bors. Fingers entwined, they reached the end of the tunnel, where they waited while Aleks glided up the steps to do some quick surveillance.

“We’re outside the wall,” he hissed on his return. “I don’t see them; they must be in the generator shack. Run for the woods, _now_.”

The last run across the field didn’t feel real. Snow drifted to the ground like delicate blossoms in one of the stories Valgund’s grandfather used to tell him about Harbour. A slow snow, no longer driven by storm, but a serious snow. It might actually cover their footsteps.

There was no time to put on snowshoes. In some places the snow had a hard crust; in others, Valgund floundered thigh-deep. He fell on his ass and didn’t want to get up—he needed to catch his breath, he needed to sleep, he was so tired. But Bors found him and yanked him to his feet. “Almost there.”

He was right. Another few paces—or maybe a hundred—and the forest closed over their heads. Even then they couldn’t rest. They scrambled up the mountainside, around crags and over fallen trunks, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the Sweetbush.

Valgund looked back once before the complex disappeared behind the trees. He saw the winking guard towers and the pale expanse of wall.

Bors came up behind him. “We fucking did it.”

“Without you, we’d be dead.”

Before today, Valgund would have expected Bors to crow over this admission. But Bors only looked embarrassed. “Without you, I wouldn’t have gotten over the wall in the first place.”

Valgund laughed—more of a gasp—and collapsed against his friend. “What a clever boy, Borsha. You found a way not to climb that wall again.”


	18. Mornings After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features some celebratory making out. :) There are about two more chapters, both of which, with any luck, I'll post next week.
> 
> Ceill's reference to the ski trip when he was eight is a callback to the story "Feature Snow." (My, Ceill has grown up fast. I can't believe I was writing him as a newborn slightly over a year ago. :) ) Thanks for reading! <3 <3

The Northmen had set up camp in a cave among the crags of Mount Eisha, one of their regular hideouts. At least they’d be concealed from air patrols, Valgund thought as Bors helped him stagger up the rocky slope into the roomy enclosure.

If a cave could be cozy in the winter, this one was. Gently glowing lanterns picked out veins of ice on the rock walls. Four round white tents, probably scavenged military gear, beckoned with promises of sleep.

Through a haze of exhaustion, Valgund watched the Northmen hugging and clapping each other on the back. Even Bors was beaming from ear to ear.

“We did it!”

“We knocked out the Sweetbush!”

“Get ready to ration, Redda!”

“They’ll never know what hit them!” Lasha grabbed Aleks, swung him around, and gave him a passionate kiss on the lips while the others made derisive noises.

Aleks pulled himself free, looking happy and not at all embarrassed. “We need to debrief.” He pointed at Bronia. “How many trees did you finish injecting?”

She tugged her hair free from its tight braid. “Nine.”

“Dang,” Lasha said, arm still around Aleks’s waist. “I only got eight.”

“Me too.” Aleks pointed at Valgund.

“Ten.” Valgund searched through the fog in his head. Was that how many he’d completed, or had he been on the tenth when the guard interrupted him?

_Oh. Shit_. They didn’t even know.

The Northmen were cheering and whistling, congratulating him on his “record.” Aleks must have seen the look on Valgund’s face, because he silenced them. “What’s wrong?”

The world spun around Valgund. “They do know what hit them,” he confessed. “They could be tracking us right now.”

He recounted as much of his interaction with the guard as he could remember, grateful for Bors’s presence beside him. The Northmen stood in a tight circle, listening closely.

“Given everything that happened that night, she’ll definitely report she saw me,” Valgund concluded. “The fence breach by itself could be a software error, and the guards could have drunk too much, and the surveillance feed could have failed. But all those things happening in a night, plus a ‘pesticide injection’ that wasn’t actually on the schedule? Obvious sabotage.”

The Northmen stared back at him, their faces showing weariness at last. After tonight’s effort and peril, the danger they were still in must be too much to absorb.

After a moment, Aleks turned to Bors. “Your friend’s wiped out,” he said with a flicker of a glance at Valgund. “He did more work than any of us, not to mention hauling your ass up that wall. Why don’t you pick a tent and get him some hot tea?”

Valgund’s chest tightened. “Did you hear what I just said, Aleks? I was hoping it would take them months to figure out what happened, even a year. They know _now_.”

“Do they?” Aleks motioned at Lasha, who opened his pack, pulled out a thermos, and passed it over. “You could be right,” he added in the same casual way, handing the thermos to Valgund. “We could all be fucked. But you’re the expert on trees, and I’m more of an expert on people. People like me.”

He gestured around the circle to include the other Northmen. “Grunts. Drudges. Every other name they call us. People who do the bare minimum of work because they have no incentive to do more. People who don’t give two fucks about the system they work for because it doesn’t work for them. Your guard sounds like one of those people.”

“Can’t be sure.” Bors sounded worried. His arm snuck around Valgund’s waist, hand barely resting on the small of his back. “If I were that guard, I’d report it.”

As one, the Northmen hooted with laughter. Aleks said, “Let’s be glad they’re not all like you, Borsha.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Valgund leaned into Bors’s arm, though his own trembling embarrassed him. “I think he means you do a very thorough job, whether you’re serving the Republic or sabotaging it.”

“That he does!” Lasha cried. “He saved us tonight.”

Bors stiffened as if he were embarrassed, too. “We all did our part. Anyway, we’re talking about this guard, not about me. You don’t think—”

Aleks shook his head, silencing the spy. “I was born under a lucky star,” he said in a tone that might or might not have been serious, “and tonight I got lucky again. _We_ got lucky.” He spoke directly to Bors. “Finding that trapdoor was lucky, too, but luck only came to you because you went looking for it.”

“Luck is a superstition,” Bors said.

Aleks smiled as if to acknowledge he’d heard that one before. “You want me to talk about merit instead? Fine. You did good work. But merit can only take you so far, and sometimes you have to trust the fate written in your stars. You’ll learn that one day.”

He pointed to the tents. “Anyway, if we don’t sleep tonight, we’ll collapse in the snow and freeze. So here we stay, and tomorrow we can worry about what they know or don’t know. Borsha, you’re in charge of getting our botanist to bed.” A wink. “And make sure not to find clever ways of keeping him up.”

This time Bors didn’t argue. Valgund was beginning to understand why no one questioned Aleks’s leadership—the man might be wrong, but when he said something with enough conviction, he made you believe it.

Vasha and Janta got busy making a fire, while the rest of them trailed toward the tents. Apparently everyone assumed that Valgund and Bors would share one.

Valgund chose not to think about Aleks’s playful parting comment—anyway, he was too exhausted. He didn’t protest when Bors insisted on helping him off with his wet clothes and tucking him into a sleeping bag. He drank tea, then broth from Bors’s own thermos, and warmth filled his chest as he relaxed back into the nest of bedding. Bors flicked off the light.

But Valgund couldn’t sleep. Whenever he drifted off, images and sensations from the past day flitted through his head: reaching for his fallen injector in the snow, smiling awkwardly at the guard, squeezing under the metal cart. He was an inch from arrest again, and he sat up in the sleeping bag, sweating and shuddering.

The third time this happened, Bors sat up, too. “You’re driving me crazy. I can’t _sleep_.”

Valgund had to smile at the classic Bors irritation, even as tears rose in his eyes. “We could’ve died,” he said in a low voice.

“You think I don’t know that? I had cyanide capsules in case they took us.”

“You . . . seriously?” Valgund tried to imagine popping instant death in his mouth. Watching Bors do it. “You’d give up, just like that?”

“It’s not giving up. It’s rational. But you’re a civilian, so I don’t expect you to understand.” Bors sighed. Then, without warning, he slipped an arm around Valgund’s waist. “I should’ve never gotten you into this.”

Since that kiss in the woods, months ago, they’d done barely any touching when their lives weren’t in danger. Valgund wanted to pull away, but the contact felt too good. He settled for saying, “You’re so full of shit, Borsha. You were as scared out there as I was—why not admit it?”

“I never said I wasn’t scared.” Bors reached across Valgund’s lap and squeezed his knee. “It’s just that I didn’t necessarily expect to survive.”

Valgund wanted to challenge this fatalism, to tell Bors that he was starting to sound like a teenage Hargist. But, as he opened his mouth to form words, he was surprised by a shudder of sensation in an unexpected place. He spread his knees—carefully, so as not to shake Bors off—and said, “Well, I _did_ expect to survive. Frankly, I expected and even hoped that we’d live long enough to someday share a proper bed and fuck each other’s brains out.”

Bors gave a little start. “You seriously . . .?”

“Yeah.” Valgund took hold of Bors’s knuckles and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Why not? You wanted to just kiss me and die? I mean, that might make a good saga. But it’s not much fun.”

After a long moment, Bors slid his hand up Valgund’s thigh. “I’ve thought about it, too,” he said. “But this isn’t a proper bed, and, uh . . . Aleks told me not to keep you up.”

“I already tried sleeping.” Still careful, because the man was so touchy, Valgund lifted Bors’s hand and brought it where he yearned to feel it. As Bors took firm hold of his cock, he added hastily, “Only if you want to. You _do_ want to?” He wished he could see Bors’s expression.

A hiss of breath. “If it’s the only way to get some rest, what choice do I have?”

“No, really. Stop!”

But then Valgund felt the vibration of Bors’s silent laughter. His grip was surprisingly firm and confident, even through the puffy bag, as he said, “You’re so easy to tease, Fir Linnett.”

“Don’t call me that.” Valgund arched into the motion. “Too much in the way,” he complained, seizing hold of Bors’s wrist to guide his hand inside the bag.

They shouldn’t be doing this. They should be resting up for tomorrow’s long hike home, or worrying about whether this was their last night as free men, or—green hells, why not enjoy it?

Bors had more experience with this sort of thing than Valgund had expected. He got a good grip again, now with only Valgund’s briefs in the way, and stroked expertly, his breath hot on Valgund’s cheek. Valgund lifted his hips, straining helplessly into that tight fist, desperate to release a day and night’s worth of tension.

He reached for Bors, trying to reciprocate. But Bors shook his head and bent to kiss Valgund—first gingerly, leaving soft pecks on his lips and jawline, and then more forcefully, opening Valgund’s mouth and claiming it with a hot, eager tongue.

“You got me over that wall,” he whispered in Valgund’s ear when their mouths came apart. “It’s my turn to do something.”

Valgund wanted to protest. Without Bors’s hand holding his as he lay wedged under that cart in the tunnel, he would have lost his nerve and given himself away. Without Bors finding the tunnel, none of them would be here at all.

Before he could say a word, Bors slithered down his body and peeled off his briefs. And then the warm, wet envelope of the spy’s mouth closed over his cockhead, sucking him in.

Valgund hadn’t expected Bors to excel at this, either. But soon he was squirming as the hot tongue worked its way down his shaft, realizing in a back-of-the-mind way that he’d probably never had head this good before. He and Garsha had been clumsy kids, still discovering each other’s bodies. In the decades since, his occasional partners had been competent at best, and typically less than generous.

Generous—that was how this felt. Bors held back a little, not swallowing Valgund all the way, but he grasped him hard at the base and gave rapt, varied attention to the whole length. The sensations thrilled up and down Valgund’s spine, and he groaned in mingled bliss and disappointment when he came quickly.

Afterward, all he felt was a wonderful drowsiness as he settled back into Bors’s arms. Reset by the overload of pleasure, his nerves had stopped their frantic firing. His eyelids grew heavy, and he forgot his desire to repay in kind.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked sleepily.

“The Sanctioned Brothel.” Bors added in his typical defensive way, “It’s a long story.”

“I want to hear it. Tomorrow.” There was so much about Bors that Valgund still didn’t know. He’d accepted the Northmen’s role in their plan because he knew enough to trust the Northmen, but he still didn’t know why the Northmen trusted Bors. When he was coherent again, he would demand more answers—and an opportunity to repay his friend in kind.

“Cyanide,” he muttered with his cheek pillowed on Bors’s chest. “I can’t believe you wanted to poison me, you strange, demented little man.”

“I _didn’t_ want to poison you, I was just covering all the bases. It’s part of my training—”

But Valgund had no more energy to bicker. He closed his eyes and let himself sink into delicious oblivion.

***

Ceill woke with a dry throat and pounding temples. He slammed the alarm into silence and forced his legs over the side of the bed.

Kai had made things brutally clear. If Ceill ever wanted to spend time at the studio and the Brothel again, if he ever even wanted to see his friends, he couldn’t bomb that damned test.

Then there was the small matter of not making his three loving parents miserable. Trying not to think about that, Ceill swallowed two pain relievers and plunged into a scalding hot shower.

Or was cold water better for a hangover? Whatever, this seemed to be waking him up. He’d been stupid last night, so stupid, but he could already feel his strong young body bouncing back.

He donned his hated school uniform like a soldier preparing for the final battle. The test was his enemy. He would conquer it. And if Ludo tried to come at him afterward, he would be prepared.

In the living room, Gersha had breakfast ready. Ceill could see him trying to hide his relief at Ceill’s more or less timely appearance.

_Did you think I’d try to sleep through it?_ But he didn’t say anything, just sat down and ate his porridge and drank his tea.

Gersha flitted nervously around him. “Your mom and Tilrey both messaged their best wishes. They thought a live conversation might make you nervous. Shall I play the messages?”

Ceill didn’t particularly want to be reminded right now of how important this was to everybody he loved, but he nodded stoically. At least his headache had retreated to a dull thud.

First Gersha played the message from his mom, who was working in Thurskein. She got teary and wrung her hands and told him he was brilliant and perfect and should trust himself and not worry about a thing.

Tilrey’s message was much shorter. Against a background of Gersha’s office in the Sector, he said, unsmiling, “I know you can do this, Ceill. And you know you can do it. So go do it.”

Gersha looked troubled. “You know he doesn’t like to gush. But he meant to say—”

“I know what he meant to say.” Ceill rose from the table; it was time to suit up for the cold and head off to school. “I know he loves me,” he added, because it would make Gersha happy and because he didn’t doubt it. Tilrey sometimes had a funny way of expressing love, that was all.

But that wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was that Tilrey’s words, _go do it_ , echoed Kai’s. In his fragile and revved-up state, Ceill knew the universe had sent him a sign.

Tilrey might not be able to admit it, at least not in front of Gersha, but he wanted Ceill to be Raised for the same reason Kai had used to persuade him last night. Because, in an unjust world, it was always better to have any advantage you could.

_Being a Strutter will give you the power to decide whether you want to live by the rules_ , Kai had said. On a long-ago ski vacation, Tilrey had taught Ceill essentially the same lesson—that he and Gersha would always be treated differently, regardless of what they believed or deserved.

Ten years later, Ceill understood what he owed the man who’d never chosen to be his father. At his age, Tilrey had been at the mercy of people with power. Ceill’s job was to make up for that.

And he would do his job. When he thought back on last night, he cringed at the timing, but he wasn’t exactly sorry. Breaking free of his responsibilities, making his own rules—all that was a foretaste of the life he would lead as an Upstart, assuming he beat the damn test and not the other way round.

At the door, he let Gersha give him a long hug. “I’ll be fine,” he said, trying to grin in that jaunty way Tilrey had. “Promise.”

Most days, Ceill insisted on taking the tram to school with all the normal kids whose parents weren’t Councillors. Today, he allowed Gersha to call the car just for him. He slid into the back seat and nodded to the driver, who said, “Big day, young Fir?”

Ceill lifted his chin. “That’s right.”

At school, he went straight to the testing amphitheater and waited outside with the rest of his class. There was none of the usual jostling or chatting, only tense faces and lowered eyes. Some students recited figures and formulae to themselves, lips moving silently. Others glared at the distraction.

Ceill went to the cooler for a long drink of water. On the way back, he spotted Ludo in the crowd with his friends. Their eyes met, but for once Ludo didn’t sneer. His face was frozen in silent, preoccupied dread, an emotion Ceill recognized because he felt the exact same thing.

Then the great doors creaked and swung open, and Ceill’s stomach flipped over. For a long moment, he didn’t move.

He remembered everything Gersha had taught him over the years about how much beautiful sense mathematics made, how he just had to trust the formulas. He remembered his mother’s glowing, confident eyes. He remembered Tilrey saying, “Go do it.”

Then he stepped through the doors and climbed down the steps and took his place at his alphabetically ordered desk. He took the answer sheet and pencils when they were handed out. He took the test booklet. He looked straight ahead, not allowing the surrounding faces to distract him.

Waiting for the signal to begin, he closed his eyes and reached deep inside for the concentration he’d had last night when he was lining up balls on the billiard table. That was all he needed. It would be enough.

Then the proctor said in an icy voice, “Begin,” and Ceill opened his eyes and began.

***

Bors woke with a little start to find himself in Valgund’s arms. The camp was still dark and quiet, but it must be six-thirty. His internal clock was never wrong.

_A Linnett. In bed. With me._ Remembering the bristly feel of Valgund’s jaw against his, he reached down to stroke the soft, thick hair on the man’s head. That rich auburn, so vivid against the bleak snowscapes they traversed—he’d wanted to touch it for a long time.

It was a careful touch; he didn’t want to wake Valgund. Didn’t want Valgund to know he’d been having those thoughts, because someone like Valgund could only want someone like Bors by default. If he weren’t the black sheep of his family, tainted by his record, he would have had his pick of lovers. Valgund was smart, tall, handsome. He could climb trees and walls. He’d been raised like a Linnett, to believe there was a bright future ahead of him even when things were at their darkest.

But he’d squirmed and moaned under Bors’s ministrations all the same. Bors smiled into the darkness. Kai had taught him well, even if Kai didn’t really want him, either.

Valgund shifted, his cock hardening as it pressed against Bors’s thigh. Bors tried to ignore it, but the pressure aroused him, too.

A moment later, Valgund opened his eyes and rolled over to face Bors. “Hey,” he said huskily. “Morning already?”

Bors nodded, trying not to feel the swelling need in his groin. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t. But now we’re up . . .” And Valgund’s hand closed around Bors’s swelling organ through the sleeping bag, cinching it so hard that Bors gasped with sudden, undeniable need.

He couldn’t see Valgund’s smile, but he could hear it. “Now, where did we leave off last night?”

When Bors imagined sex with Valgund—and he had imagined it, many times—he’d imagined humiliation. It was so easy to mock and belittle him. Tilrey Bronn had done it, viciously, and so had Kai at first. After he’d grown more comfortable with Kai, Bors once dared to ask him: “Why’d you always use to make fun of me? Is it just the thought of fucking somebody puny and pathetic and—beady-eyed, or whatever?”

“Green hells, no, Borsha,” Kai assured him, looking gorgeously concerned. “When you actually let down your guard for a second, you’re beautiful.” Which was exactly the kind of thing a whore would say.

When Bors and Valgund kissed in the woods, though, Valgund hadn’t made any snide comments. Last night, he hadn’t sounded sarcastic when he praised Bors’s oral technique, despite calling Bors “you strange, demented little man.” (But was that teasing? Even affectionate teasing? How on earth were you supposed to tell teasing apart from cruelty?)

And now—now, Valgund was almost awkward. “Mind if I get in with you?” he whispered, unzipping Bors’s sleeping bag.

Bors shook his head and squeezed over to make room. He didn’t trust his voice.

“Ugh, I don’t fit. Wait, no. Here we go.” Valgund rezipped the bag partway, pressing against Bors head to toe. Reaching between their bodies, he took Bors in hand and began jerking him off in rough but effective strokes.

The pace was uneven, not smooth like Kai’s hand jobs. But the friction made Bors’s back arch and his toes curl, sending shivers of sensation up his spine. He squeezed his eyes shut and said, “Don’t stop,” even as a sudden intuition told him: _He’s barely done this before._

Was that possible? Could a Linnett, with his proud Linnett bearing and his noble Linnett features, have trouble getting laid? Or had Valgund stayed celibate for some more high-minded reason?

These were the last coherent thoughts Bors had for a while, though, because Valgund’s enthusiasm more than made up for his clumsiness. Soon Bors was keening softly into his shoulder, and Valgund was laughing just as softly and teasing: “You don’t want to wake Aleks, do you?”

***

Three hours later, skiing across an open snowfield, they heard the first chopper.

The Northmen barely seemed fazed by the noise that churned up the sky. Aleks beckoned, and together they all glided off the trail and took cover in the woods.

Bors, who wasn’t good on skis, had trouble navigating the underbrush. Valgund caught him around the waist and steered him expertly into a spruce thicket, where they waited for the burring motor to disappear.

After that, back on the trail, they heard two more helicopters in the distance. “They’re sweeping the whole mountain,” Bors said grimly, trying not to let his teeth chatter.

Aleks nodded. He still didn’t look worried, only intent. “This area’s always pretty heavily patroled.”

“That’s true,” Valgund said, though he didn’t sound convinced. Then he turned to Bors and said with forced casualness, “Tell me more about your friends in the Brothel. How’d you meet this Kai, anyway?”

“We were schoolmates.” But as he told the story, Bors was thinking about something else.

Last night, as they lay half-crushed under the cart in the tunnel waiting for possible capture and death, Bors had realized something. He’d never thought about what he’d do—what _they’d_ do—after sabotaging the Sweetbush. Maybe he hadn’t expected to survive. Or maybe it had been a distant goal for so many years that he imagined it as the end of his world.

It turned out there was a future, though. He was in it, and it was cold and clammy, and Valgund’s hand and gaze were warm, and Bors desperately didn’t want to die. Under the bench, he’d felt ready to use those cyanide capsules. But now? No. Please, no.

He caught Valgund’s eyes and thought he read the same plea there.

But Valgund only said, “It’s just like the plot of _Their Ways Parted_. You and Kai. He wrote your story, didn’t he?”

“Kind of.” Bors’s face burned. He hadn’t expected Valgund to be a stream watcher. “With us it wasn’t quite that romantic, and there wasn’t a girl involved. But whatever, sobstreams.”

Valgund’s cheeks were pink, too. “I feel like I understand a lot more about you now.”

“Uh, well.” Bors ducked his head. “We’re almost there, right? At the point where we part ways?” He gestured at the Northmen, who would hop a supply train back to Thurskein while Bors and Valgund returned to the Upstart complex.

“We may part ways with them, but we don’t have to with each other,” Valgund said with a dry smile. “This time, I insist you come home with me and warm up. There’s a lovely big bath in the villa, and you’re shivering.”

Bors flushed again at the thought of using Councillor Gádden’s bath. “I can’t.”

“Don’t be silly. They’re all in Redda; we’ll have the place to ourselves.” Valgund didn’t quite wink, but he did grin slyly. “We can finally have a proper conversation.” He broke off, head tilted. “What is that?”

Bors heard it, too—a snow skimmer, coming straight toward them across the field. Then the rumble of a second one, sliding up too fast behind them.

“Shit.” Aleks whipped around, nimble as always, and led them back into the thicket. “They’ve got us on their scanners.” He jerked to a stop and used a tree trunk to pivot. “If they’re gonna be difficult, we might as well go and face them.”

“Let me!” Bors tried to force his way to the front of the group, floundering on his skis. “I’ll deal with them; I have my ID; I’ll say—”

But the Northmen glided past him, straight back toward the trail and the skimmers. No one questioned their leader’s judgment. Aleks called over his shoulder, “Just sit tight, Bors. You can’t help here.”

Bors watched in disbelief, his heart hammering, as the Northmen followed Aleks into the arms of the authorities. One of the skimmers had already come to a stop, snow feathering around it. Two soldiers in rust-colored jerkins leapt out, long rifles slung over their shoulders—semiautomatic models that could easily mow down the lot of them and spray the snow with blood.

The Northmen were walking straight toward the rifles. Bors’s eyes met Valgund’s, and he saw them widen with the same terror that locked his own muscles in place.

Was Aleks betraying them, after all this? It didn’t seem possible. He tried to find his old nihilism about the future, his blissful indifference, but it was gone.

Through the screen of underbrush, he watched the second skimmer pull up, cornering their group. That one carried two armed patrolers, too. And when they dismounted, their weapons were aimed straight at the Northmen.

“Line up, all of you,” an officer shouted. “Hands in the air! This is a restricted area. You, too.” He gestured at Bors and Valgund. “Out of the woods!”

Between fast, shallow breaths, it was hard to talk. “Lie your way out,” Bors hissed at Valgund. “You’re supposed to be here. Just pretend you aren’t with the rest of us.”

What could Bors tell the soldiers? That he’d been surveilling the Northmen and they were his prisoners? But he wasn’t assigned to this area, and anyway, it didn’t pass the smell test. You didn’t send one deskbound analyst to capture a crew of dangerous outlaws. Besides, if Aleks were actually betraying them—

He poled the tab to release his skis, kicked them off, and trudged out of the woods. Without thinking, he seized Valgund’s hand.

Aleks was talking to the officer who’d shouted at them—a lieutenant, Bors saw now. The Northmen’s leader stood less than a yard from the man, hands in the air as directed, speaking in a voice too low for any of them to hear.

Bors glanced around at the others. Lasha’s face showed blind confidence in his leader and lover. Bronia looked a little worried, but not enough. Vasha’s face was stony. Only young Janta’s eyes were wide with fear.

Aleks stopped talking and smiled at the lieutenant—a radiant, guileless smile. The smile of someone fate has chosen.

The lieutenant didn’t smile back. He raised a transceiver to his ear and muttered into it. As he listened to whoever was on the other end, his frown deepened.

They waited, all absolutely still—the Northmen and Bors and Valgund with their hands raised, the soldiers with weapons trained on them. The twilight deepened, broken only by the white glare of the skimmers’ headlights. Snow slid from the bough of a tall spruce and landed with a soft plop.

The lieutenant lowered his transceiver. “They’re fine,” he growled at his troops. “Move on out.”

Bors couldn’t have heard correctly. He didn’t dare move, even as the soldiers shouldered their weapons and boarded their skimmers. How could they leave without checking ID chips? It was outside all normal protocols. You couldn’t let random Laborers wander around the Wastes, especially after a government facility had been breached.

Nonetheless, it was happening. The skimmers revved into gear and sped away, plumes of snow rising in their wake and washing Bors’s face with a cold mist.

He remembered how, fifteen years ago, he’d seen footage of Aleks being arrested for wall breaking and attempting to grow his own sap plantation. They’d let him go that time, too. Director Gelmedyn and Councillor Karishkov, who were usually so eager to round up misbehaving Laborers, explained the offense away as youthful hijinks.

Bors thought it was a fluke, an error, a symptom of his superiors’ having different priorities from his own. Now he knew he’d been wrong. Either Aleks was very well connected in some unimaginable way, or he was an informant. And if he was an informant, why were Bors and Valgund still free men?

When Aleks slogged back into the woods to collect his skis, Bors tried to read his face. In the gathering dark, he made out only one high-arched black brow.

“I know what you’re thinking, Fir Int/Sec Analyst,” Aleks said in a low voice, bending to put the skis on. “But if I were going to betray you, wouldn’t I have done it already?”

“Maybe.” Bors had felt nervous and shy around Aleks before, but this was the first time he’d felt afraid. The man’s face looked sterner in the half-light, his bearing as proud as an Upstart’s. There was something familiar about this new side of him.

One of the many rumors about Aleks Snowblind was that he was a misbirth, the son of a high name. Bors had always discounted that as rubbish.

But the man wasn’t a snitch. Bors had known and observed many informants, and he’d never known one who aroused as much trust and love in his targets as Aleks did.

As Aleks flew back onto the trail, Bors turned to Valgund, whose face was a white smear on the dark, probably as stunned as his own. He said, “I don’t call that luck. The man has protection. And I’m going to find out whose.”

***

“Time,” the test proctor said.

It took a few seconds for the word to register in Ceill’s head. He’d been roughing out a patch for a faulty algorithm. His mind was still working, his pencil poised above the paper ready to draw another square bracket. What was the code for a double indentation?

“Time,” the proctor said again, louder.

Ceill looked up and saw the students around him setting down their pencils. The windows were black, reflecting the harsh yellow lights of the amphitheater. While he wrote and wrote until his hand ached, the sun had come up and gone down again.

He set down the pencil and closed the answer booklet. He placed his hands palm-down on top and looked straight ahead, waiting for the proctor to collect it.

Like someone waking from a trance, he could no longer remember the test. Had he answered enough questions? Had he made mistakes left and right?

No matter. It was over. He’d done what he could, and he’d never have to do it again.


	19. Building and Burning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter will be up in a day or so—thanks for reading! <3

Ludo Akeina pressed his back against the cold marble wall of a hallway in Government Sector and listened.

A few yards away, the door of his mother’s office hung half-open. Her loud, distinctive laughter trilled through the dusty air of the vacant corridor. Ludo, concealed in a shallow alcove, shivered with disgust.

His mother used to laugh like that when he told her funny stories about his schoolmates, but not for a while. Not since his scores on last year’s pre-test. Even now that he’d gotten the worst part of the E-Squareds out of the way, she was more likely to look stern and tell him to stop taking everything so lightly.

Anyway, now she had somebody new to laugh with. When Ludo angled his head and listened closely, he heard the low rumble of a male voice.

 _That man_ was standing practically in the doorway, but he kept his voice down so Ludo couldn’t make out the words. Ludo’s mom wasn’t so careful, or maybe she didn’t care.

“Stop it, Rishka!” That was her, sounding fond and playful. “You’re absolutely wicked.”

More inaudible rumbling from _him._ Ludo’s gorge rose. If they didn’t separate soon, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to follow through on his plan without puking all over the bastard’s desk.

Or whatever you wanted to call him—“Rishka.” Tilhard Edvard Bronn. The asshole, the Drudge, the old worn-out _piece_ who was fucking Ludo’s mother.

Another trilling laugh. She sounded so happy. “Sweetheart, don’t worry about it. You always present things so beautifully to the committee.”

Now her tone was patronizing, almost maternal. Ludo wanted to barf again. Maybe she really didn’t care who heard her with Secretary Bronn; maybe she was showing off to her colleagues. Didn’t she realize how pathetic she sounded?

A ten-day ago, when Ludo informed his dad what he’d observed and overheard between Tilrey Bronn and his mother, his dad had a long, hearty laugh. Then he said, “She might as well try him. The rest of us have. He’s way past his prime, but women prefer that sometimes. I suppose he’s picked up some handy skills.” He saw his son’s expression. “What’s wrong?”

Ludo couldn’t believe how disgusting his dad was being. “Those _pictures_ ,” he said.

He’d spent his early teens poring over the half-naked boy in those stolen photographs, the boy who looked like Ceill Linnett. When Dad caught Ludo sneaking the files off his desktop, he’d made it clear to his son, without spelling it out, that he himself had enjoyed the favors of the most celebrated kettle boy in recent history.

That part Ludo could handle. But his _mother_? “It’s disgusting and wrong,” he told his father. “You need to make it stop.”

Councillor Lindthardt shrugged. “Not my business. If you want peace of mind, stop spying on your mother’s private life. Personally, I couldn’t care less what or who she’s doing.”

That attitude was all very well for Ludo’s dad, who barely spoke to his spouse anymore, but Ludo loved his mother. And he _hadn’t_ been spying—he’d just happened to see her seize Bronn’s hand as he left her office. He couldn’t believe that she, at her age, would fawn over someone who was basically the Council’s . . .

Ugly, obscene phrases passed through Ludo’s head, making him squirm with resolution. He knew it was absurd, but he couldn’t help feeling like that prick Ceill had arranged this as a way to get back at him.

Not that there was anything to get back at him for! He’d tried so hard to be nice to Ceill when they were little. The boy was a natural victim: He had a funny Thurskein accent and was too shy to stand up for himself, even if his dad was a Councillor. So Ludo made a special point of talking to him, trying to make him feel included. Sometimes he even fantasized about protecting him and making him a _special friend_.

When he showed Ceill the picture of Tilrey Bronn, he thought in his innocence that he was transmitting useful info while paying him a compliment. _Your dad’s boyfriend was gorgeous, and you look just like him._ It was only when Ceill flipped out, ripped up the photo, and threatened Ludo that Ludo got a whiff of the nest of deceit and scandal he’d stepped in.

After that, yes, maybe he’d sometimes been a little cruel. But how could you be friendly to someone who was always either threatening you or glaring at you with cold blue eyes like you’d done something awful to him? Somewhere along the way, a mousy little kid had turned into a broad-shouldered man who was nearly a head taller than Ludo. To this day, he’d never dared tell an adult what he suspected about Ceill’s parentage because he dreaded Ceill’s reaction. Anyway, he suspected at least some of them already knew.

Right now, Ceill was probably off at the Brothel, flirting and laughing with Darius the way Ludo’s mother was flirting with Tilrey. Ludo’s head throbbed, and he closed his eyes and rested his cheek on the cool marble. Of course Darius would want someone like Ceill. It was _so unfair._

As well as growing up big and strong, Ceill had grown up painfully beautiful, with the blooming complexion and sky-blue eyes of the boy in the photo. So beautiful that Ludo sometimes wanted to tear out his own hair and bang his head against a wall because no one who looked like Ceill would ever love him.

In April, when they got their test results, the whole world might change. Ludo had sometimes fantasized about Ceill being Lowered and then coming crawling to him, begging him for help securing a good posting. But he had no illusions that a Councillor’s son would actually be Lowered—and even if that happened, Ceill would be as proud as ever. He’d probably run away and be an outlaw, ditching this whole stupid city once and for all.

Inside the office, Ludo’s mother giggled. “C’mere.”

“I have to go, Fir’n.”

“Just for a second.”

Movement. Clothes brushing against clothes. Ludo could swear he heard the smack of a kiss. He gritted his teeth, forehead against the marble. _I hate him I hate him I hate him._

Then, before he could recover from his spasm of rage, the office door clicked shut. A pair of businesslike male footsteps came down the hall, passing Ludo’s hiding place without pausing.

 _Like I’m not even here._ Feeling more alone than he ever had in his life, but also more resolved, Ludo left the alcove and followed the footsteps to Councillor Gádden’s office.

The door was ajar. He could see someone moving around the antechamber, messing with the computer.

As Ludo gathered his courage, the tall figure came to the door and threw it open. “Oh, hello,” he said pleasantly. “Can I help you, young Fir?”

For a moment, Ludo couldn’t speak. He had never actually stood face to face with Tilrey Bronn before.

On the surface, there was nothing intimidating about this man, dressed in an R-6 jerkin and speaking as deferentially as any Sector functionary. Peering at Ludo, he took a pair of glasses from the desk and put them on.

But Ludo had caught a glimpse of those searing blue eyes, so like Ceill’s. He knew what he was dealing with.

After a moment, he said dazedly, “Do you even know who I am?”

Bronn’s eyes narrowed behind the glasses. He was trying to look old and fuddy-duddy and harmless, but he wasn’t convincing anyone. Down deep, he was still the sly, ravishing boy from those pictures.

“I think perhaps you’re Fir Councillor Lindthardt’s son,” he said. “You favor him.”

 _Don’t speak my father’s name._ But Ludo wasn’t here about that. If his dad didn’t mind what his mom and Bronn were doing, it was beneath him to mind, too.

No. He was here about Ceill.

He stepped inside and closed the door, just to show Bronn he wasn’t afraid to be alone with him. “I go to school with Ceill. _Your son_.”

As he spoke, Ludo looked not at Bronn but at the window behind him, making it very clear he wasn’t interested in the man’s reaction to knowing he knew. Caring was beneath him. He had a simple job to do: to show this man who his son really was.

“I thought,” he said, “you might want to know where Ceillsha goes when he sneaks out of the house.”

***

“How’s she now?” Kai asked in a stage whisper, sticking his head around the door of Hulda’s chamber.

Einara, who sat on the edge of the bed where the Director lay supine in a thicket of cords and monitors, waved him away. Hulda didn’t open her grayish eyelids, but she gritted out, “Not dead yet, my lad. Come back later.”

With an alarmed look, and then an imploring one at Einara, Kai popped his head back out of the room.

“You should’ve seen his face. Like a schoolboy who’s been caught at something,” Einara said. She picked up a fresh, cool cloth and swabbed the Director’s forehead.

Hulda’s bloodless lips smiled. “I can imagine. Go talk to him.”

“We’ve nothing to say to each other.” But she’d been tending Hulda since early morning, so she rose and said, “I need some tea. Back in a moment.”

In the hallway outside the Director’s suite, she found Kai pacing. He caught her hands and drew her to him, his handsome lips pouting. “You’ve been in there three days straight. I thought you wanted her dead so badly you were ready to stab her yourself.”

“I do want her dead,” Einara said. Stepping outside the sickroom made her head swim oddly. “And she knows it.”

“Then why?”

They’d had versions of this argument before, and it was no use trying to explain to him. “I want to be the one to see her off. The doctor says it won’t be long now.”

“Good.” Kai held her hands fast, stroking them. “Then you’ll be the Director, right? She is going to appoint you?”

“She says she’s already done the paperwork.” Einara spoke guardedly; she didn’t trust Hulda, and she didn’t like to rely on anyone she couldn’t trust.

Kai had no such scruples. “Who else could it be? You’ll be in charge, and then you’ll be my wife. Finally.”

Always this fixation on marriage, as if he wanted to own her—as if he thought he could. It amused Einara, mostly. “Are you sure you’ve thought this over?” she asked, half-serious. “With the sort of viewership you’re getting now, you could leave here, my love, and find yourself an adoring wife in the outside world. The Bureau of Diversions might even raise your ration level.”

“Fuck the Bureau.” His mouth twisted. “The censors keep rejecting my Lindahl episode arc—did I tell you? They’re calling it an ‘unduly cynical portrayal of an elected official.’”

“Why don’t you tell them it’s based on fact?”

“Yeah, that’d go over well. I’ll just have to keep hedging and rewriting it.” His expression turned solemn as he reached down to tidy a lock of hair that had escaped from her braid. “Anyway, don’t joke about that. Why would I want any other wife than you?”

“You’d make a good father.” This, too, they’d discussed so many times it was hardly worth mentioning. Brothel workers couldn’t legally reproduce.

“ _You’d_ make a good mother. It’s not too late. We could leave here together.”

Einara didn’t bother to answer. Kai knew her position, and even as his arms enfolded her, his face showed the usual hint of regret. “You’re so _set_ on all of this—whatever you’re doing here,” he whispered. “Half the time I don’t even understand you. Sometimes you scare me.”

“I know, love.” Looking up into his eyes, with their hurt, baffled expression, Einara wished she could give him everything he wanted.

But she didn’t wish it enough. First through Ceill and now through Aleks, she had an embryonic sense of how it would feel to wield actual power. Unlike Hulda, _this_ Brothel director wouldn’t wait around for the True Hearth to give her marching orders in accordance with its policy objectives. She might not know yet how she would have her true revenge, but the successful sabotage of the Sweetbush would hurt Oslov, and Redda in particular. The pieces were falling into place.

“You owe me nothing, you know,” she said, stroking Kai’s cheek. “You have your freedom.”

Kai pulled away from her. He yanked down his shirt to display the _E_ branded above his collarbone, which still made Einara wince. “Free? You put your fucking name on me.”

“It was a tactic. You know that.” He knew everything about her except what mattered most. “I had to make her believe we weren’t allied against her.”

“Think she still believes that? Anyway, ’Nara, you can’t say that to me. You _know_ everything I’ve done for you.” He took hold of her shoulders, gazing into her eyes. “I love you. So, as long as you’re here in this shithole, I’m here.”

Einara was surprised by the tears that stung her eyes as she gave him a light kiss on the lips. “If that’s really what you want, I’ll be honored to be your wife.” It wasn’t what he wanted, or probably what he deserved, but she could give him that, at least.

Kai deepened the kiss until she had to tug away, saying, “I need to check on her.”

He grumbled wordlessly, rubbing his rough cheek against her forehead. “Let the med-aide do that.”

“They can’t do anything more for her. She just needs company. I’ll see you soon—this evening.”

Back in the old woman’s bedroom, Einara dipped a fresh cloth in water and wiped Hulda’s forehead. She tucked a napkin under her chin and fed her the few spoonfuls of broth she could still tolerate.

“What a treasure you are, my girl.” Hulda kept her eyes closed; speaking seemed to take all her strength. “I can see why your swain is upset, with all the time you spend watching me die.”

“He’ll get over it,” Einara said in the same guarded way she’d told Kai about Hulda’s promises to her.

“Yes, I imagine. He’s besotted.” The woman’s lips worked grotesquely, as if she tasted something bad. “Remember back when you two tried to convince me you despised each other? For a year or so I actually believed it. Hold my hand.”

Einara took the withered hand. She had spent eighteen years handling and pleasuring and massaging this body, watching it decline from still-vigorous old age to the brink of death. Try as she might, she couldn’t enjoy what she was witnessing, or avoid foreseeing her own mortality in Hulda’s, so she touched her with a grim reverence. In too many ways, the old woman had gotten under her skin.

Hulda was quiet for a while, and Einara thought she had drifted into one of her fitful naps. Then, abruptly, she said, “Bors.”

“Excuse me, Fir’n Director?” Einara, too, had been thinking about Bors Dartán. The news about the Sweetbush had come yesterday via their Northman contact in the Outer Ring, and she hoped Bors would soon return to the city to give her a first-hand report.

“My nephew, yes. My _surviving_ nephew.” The skeletal hand gripped Einara’s; for an instant it was disturbingly strong. “Get Gastetter and ask her to ring Bors’s handheld. Tell him my time is coming and I want to see him at my bedside, immediately.”

***

As the tub filled, Valgund cornered Bors and kissed him. He gently tugged off his friend’s shirt, saying, “I want to see you in the light.”

Bors reddened and trembled, but he allowed Valgund to undress him. He was very modest for someone of his sexual expertise—just another mystery Valgund hoped to solve by the end of the night.

They were spending their second night in Gersha’s villa, having arrived yesterday too exhausted from their trek to do anything but bathe separately and fall into bed. Knowing how uncomfortable Bors was in what he saw as enemy territory, Valgund had offered him the freshly made-up bed in Ceill’s room—which Bors refused, blushing. They’d slept chastely side by side in Valgund’s bed.

Now, though, after a huge late breakfast and a cozy afternoon lounging by the fire—most of which Bors spent nervously scanning Int/Sec comms on his handheld—Valgund hoped they could get a little closer.

When he touched the waistband of Bors’s briefs, Bors slithered out of them and broke free. “I still don’t feel like I should be here,” he said, escaping into the tub.

“Just pretend it’s my place.” Valgund tossed off his own clothes and followed. He wasn’t used to being a host, but he’d enjoyed fetching and carrying for Bors, doing all the little things that Tilrey and Gersha did to make their guests comfortable. If Bors were willing to stay a third night, Valgund might even get a chance to cook properly for him.

He lowered himself into the tub, making sure to give Bors plenty of space. “They won’t come back until after my nephew gets Notified, and that’s a month and a half.”

Bors sank into the steam, his bony knees bobbing to the surface. “Your nephew? That’s Gersha’s son?”

“Right, Ceill. My sister and Gersha are married,” Valgund reminded him hastily, because Bors had no reason to care about the mating habits of high Upstarts unless it was part of his spy work. “We’ve all been coaching him for the test. He’s like me—smart kid, but not so _technev_. Anyway,” he said, changing the subject because he didn’t want to think about Ceill just now, “are you ever going to tell me what you have against Gersha and Tilrey? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Bors’s face closed, his mouth flattening. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t care. Tell me.”

Bors lifted his chin and said in his most obnoxiously formal voice, “Years ago, I spent some time surveilling Tilrey Bronn. I believe I have evidence he’s a Dissident.”

Valgund’s mouth fell open. “Seriously?”

Bors reddened—or rather, reddened further. They were both chin-deep in the tub now, letting the bubbling, steaming water flush the cold of yesterday’s hike from their bones. “The evidence was there.”

“What evidence?” Seeing Bors’s expression, Valgund added, “Please don’t say it’s classified. The two of us are partners in crime now, remember?”

“I guess we are.” Bors kept scowling. “Do you swear on your honor and your ID chip never to tell Gádden and Bronn what I’m going to tell you?”

“Of course!”

“Put your hand on your ID chip and swear.”

Valgund felt like he was back in school, but he did as he was told.

And then, with surprising ease, Bors told a long story involving someone named Ranek Egil and meetings in a vacant apartment. Valgund tried in vain to keep all the details straight.

He himself had been fairly sure that Tilrey and Gersha were part of some sort of resistance for years. Out of courtesy and gratitude for the home they’d given him, he didn’t ask inconvenient questions. Maybe they thought they were protecting him by keeping him in the dark. The only one with whom he’d discussed the matter, briefly and obliquely, was Mal Sollentaal, who was clearly also involved.

“That all seems very circumstantial to me,” he said when Bors was finished, reaching over to tweak pale, wet hair off the spy’s forehead. “I mean, I won’t question your spycraft, but I don’t see it. The two of them certainly have an unconventional relationship, but they’re both policy nerds. I can’t imagine them wanting to tear down the government in any way, shape, or form.”

Bors didn’t stiffen under the touch, but his face was troubled. “I can’t say anything against the Councillor except that he ignored my warning. But Bronn gives speeches in Chambers these days as if he were the Councillor himself. He mocks his betters with abandon—I’ve seen it. Doesn’t that corroborate what I found?”

“Tilrey’s always been perfectly respectful to me,” Valgund said soothingly—not that he cared, but Bors obviously would. “His sense of humor is a little dry; maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.”

Bors shook his head.

“Honestly, though, I think you and he and Gersha might have a fair bit in common, politically. If they knew what we just did, they might actually approve of it. Not that I’d ever breathe a word,” Valgund added, startled by the new look that had come over Bors’s face—as if he might be sick to his stomach. “Sweetheart,” he said without thinking, “what’s wrong?”

“You’re not listening. You’re talking like _they_ always do. Over me.”

Who was _they_? High Upstarts, Valgund supposed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be dismissive. Tell me.”

Bors spoke as if an alien force were tearing the words from him, his lip quivering like a child’s. “Tilrey Bronn insulted _me_. He toyed with _me_.”

Valgund regretted ever introducing the topic. He shot a longing glance at their clothes tangled up on the floor, remembering how promisingly this had started.

Then he placed a hand on Bors’s shoulder and rubbed gently, trying to keep the man from retreating inward. “If you want to talk about it, don’t hold back.” The spy’s thin face looked so vulnerable without his glasses, the eyes bleary and red-rimmed. “I can keep secrets.”

Bors gave Valgund’s hand a tentative stroke. “Maybe another time. I’ve never told anybody. I—I was ashamed.”

“I’m sorry.” Valgund kept rubbing. He was curious, but it could wait. Bors clearly didn’t find it easy to bare his vulnerabilities. “Tell me more about your friends in the Brothel, then. This Einara—I heard the Northmen mention her. How did she connect with Aleks?”

“I don’t know yet, honestly.” Bors frowned, but it was one of his usual huffy frowns, and Valgund breathed a sigh of relief. “She wouldn’t tell me, but I mean to find out. Of course I never gave her your name, though she fished for it.”

“Thank you.” Valgund wasn’t sure he liked what he’d heard so far about this Einara. “How does an Outer get that kind of power, anyway?”

“She’s clever. She spent years buttering up the Director and building support among the staff. She knows how to work her contacts, and she even . . .”

Bors’s expression had turned almost guilty. “What?” Valgund asked, his hand sliding off his friend’s shoulder.

“Nothing. It’s just, I keep forgetting you’re a Linnett. That makes you valuable. If Einara knew about you, she’d probably want to use you to get to your mother or sister.”

“I don’t feel so valuable.” Valgund tried to make it into a joke, but it fell flat. He climbed out of the bath, careful on the wet tiles, and handed a towel down to Bors. “You’re right, though. She sounds like a dangerous character. I don’t particularly want anyone blackmailing my family.”

“I don’t know if she’d do that. Maybe just use them as leverage over you.” Bors rose from the water, towel modestly draped around his waist. “But I won’t let her.”

“Oh, you won’t let her, will you?” Bors’s tone—peremptory, almost possessive—tickled Valgund. He hooked the spy around his narrow waist, unself-conscious about his own nudity.

Bors’s towel slid to the floor. He blushed again, violently, but he yielded easily when Valgund pulled him in for a kiss, his mouth hot and eager.

 _Little slut,_ Valgund thought experimentally. He honestly wasn’t sure anymore what turned him on—top or bottom, role-play or just tenderness—but he did know Bors’s mouth had done the job the other night. And he knew what he’d been fantasizing about ever since their first kiss in the woods.

“Do you like, er, being fucked?” he asked in as timid a tone as he could, half expecting Bors to thrust him away in outrage.

Instead, Bors crumpled, hiding his hot face against Valgund’s shoulder. “Yes,” he said with none of his usual arrogance. “Do you, uh . . . do you want to do that?”

Valgund hadn’t been sure, but his cock was more decisive. “I think . . . please,” he said, easing it against Bors’s groin and feeling the answering swelling. “I mean, if that would work for you. I’d be careful, of course. To make it good for you.”

Bors’s eyes had gone hazy with need. “You’re nice and big,” he said, reaching between their bodies to take Valgund in hand, and began working him with expert strokes. “I’m used to that. You don’t have to worry about hurting me.”

The arousal was an electric current up and down Valgund’s spine. He arched into Bors, one hand on his flat ass and the other tangled in his hair, and moaned. “I don’t want to hurt you. But verdant hells, I want to be inside you. I want to make you _writhe_ , you strange, prickly little man.”

“You keep calling me little.” Bors’s tone was aggrieved, but his hand didn’t stop.

“I’m sorry.” Valgund gasped. “You’re little in the best way. Like a deadly scorpion.”

Bors looked like he wanted to be angry at this characterization, but instead he laughed—a wet-eyed, red-faced laugh like a child’s. “You’re horrible.”

“At sexy banter? Believe me, I know.”

“I like you that way.” Bors’s hand worked faster as the two of them found their way to the bed.

***

Bors woke from a sound sleep to the noisy vibration of his handheld on a wooden surface. Where the hell had he put that thing?

He ached all over, but in a good way; even his neck and throat were raw from the sucking and nipping. He’d let himself be possessed the way he so often secretly wanted to—the first time he’d let another Upstart have him, let alone a Linnett.

But Valgund wasn’t like other high names. He wasn’t like anyone but himself. And Bors hadn’t been reminded of Tilrey this time—well, hardly at all.

Valgund’s sleeping body was heavy. Bors struggled out from under it and grabbed the device, which was teetering on the edge of the headboard shelf.

A voice message. He listened to it twice, then clicked over to check the time of his return flight to Redda.

Valgund rolled over and blinked drowsily, looking younger with his sleep-heavy eyes. Bors felt an unexpected, almost frightening rush of tenderness.

“It’s my aunt,” he explained. “The Brothel director, the one who’s dying.” Ordinarily it would have mortified him to discuss his low relations with another Upstart, but they were well past that. “Her doctor says she wants me to come see her, right away.”

“Then you should go.” Valgund slid over and pressed his cheek to Bors’s hip, his dark eyes earnest.

“We’ve never really gotten along.” How could he explain to someone like Valgund, someone with family pride, how much his aunt repulsed him?

“I know, but she’s dying. And she wants to see you.”

Bors wanted nothing more than to stay right here. But Valgund was right—a person’s last moment was important, and Hulda was approaching hers.

And there was another reason to see her, one he’d almost forgotten. As he threaded his fingers through Valgund’s red-brown locks and pulled the man’s head back to bare his throat, trying to fix all these sensations in his memory, he thought of the boy he’d spotted in the Brothel hallway last time he visited. The dead ringer for Tilrey.

Ceill Linnett might be Tilrey’s son, but he was also Valgund’s nephew. Until tonight, that fact hadn’t fully registered with Bors, and even if it had, it would have been outweighed by his hatred of Tilrey. Now, though, remembering the affection in Valgund’s voice when he spoke of Ceill, he didn’t want Einara to have free rein to mold the boy. Valgund was right; she was dangerous.

“You can come back here any time you like,” Valgund said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Bors bent to give him a last kiss. “I have three more days off,” he said. “And I’ll come right back . . . if you want me.”

***

Bors didn’t expect to cry at his aunt’s death bed. But when Einara led him into the room and he saw the meager form lying there, with her bloodless, emaciated face and closed eyes, tears filled his own eyes before he could blink them away.

Einara pulled up a chair for him. “She’s awake, just resting. I’ll leave you two.”

Bors didn’t want to be alone with this living corpse. But, as Einara left, he forced himself to sit down and even touch his aunt’s cold hand. “It’s me, Aunt Hulda. You said you wanted to see me.”

Hulda opened her eyes. Bors drew in his breath, shocked—her gaze was just as focused and cunning as ever. It was as if some vital, alien spirit had possessed her failing body.

“You’re so like me, Borsha,” she said in a cracked voice. “The older you get, the more I see it.”

Bors lowered his head to hide his grimace. What was one supposed to say to the dying? Did one have to be polite? “Is there anything I can get you? Has my mother been here?” he added, hoping he wouldn’t run into her.

“She has,” Hulda said. “Be glad you don’t take after _her_ , the poor fool—always so sentimental. Not enough sense to get much done. No, you’re like me. Have I told you about my rat?”

Bors wondered if she’d taken leave of her reason. “No, Aunt Hulda.”

“She was _my_ rat.” Still his aunt fixed him with that stern gaze. “When I was a young girl, there was a nest of them in the basement of our building. I found her when she was young and made a pet of her. Built her a house from a crate and sawdust. Let her ride on my shoulder.”

Bors cringed at the very thought of rats. His mother’s family had been so low-rationed, living in one of the worker high-rises near the edge of the city. “I hope that didn’t last long.”

“It didn’t. One day when I was at school, a hygiene inspector came through, and _phhhhkt_!” Hulda made a whisking motion with her fingers. “They incinerated her. Fumigated her relatives. Cleaned the whole place out.”

“Rats carry disease,” Bors said.

A dry little sound came from Hulda that might have been a laugh. “Such an upstanding citizen, Borsha. So cruel. Haven’t you ever loved anything?”

Bors felt a blush spread down his neck. “Not a rodent.”

“It doesn’t matter _what_ you love, dear nephew.” She cleared her throat. “I’m trying to explain to you why I became a shirker.”

Either he hadn’t heard right, or she was deeper into dementia than he’d thought. “Don’t joke about Dissidence, Aunt. It’s a serious matter.”

Hulda laughed again. “It’s charming. Your refusal to suspect me, all this time. You’re so eager to ferret out shirkers, yet when I tell you flat-out, you don’t listen.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it with surprising strength. “I’m telling you because it’s too late for you to drag me into an interrogation cell—though I suppose you could still try.”

Bors’s head spun, the world churning sickeningly around him. It couldn’t be true, but his aunt’s eyes were steady. She appeared perfectly aware of what she was saying.

“Anyway,” Hulda said, giving his hand a pat, “you’re not so pure yourself, are you, nephew? You and Einara—” She paused for a coughing fit so violent that Bors rose mechanically and found her a glass of water.

Hulda took several sips while he held the glass. When she was able to speak, she continued: “I don’t know what you two are up to. But it involves the Northmen.”

“I’m not up to anything with the Northmen!” Bors lied recklessly. His face and neck dripped with sweat, even as he shivered. Had Aunt Hulda really been a shirker all this time—right under his nose? He didn’t want to believe it. Maybe she was lying to torment him. But was even she that perverse?

He set the glass back on the bedside table and tried to reason with her. “Dissidence is something you risk your life for, Aunt. No one becomes a shirker because of a rat.”

“I never did like people that much. Animals don’t lie to you.” She shrugged. “If I want a pet, why can’t I have one? A society that doesn’t allow you even that much freedom, a society that’s stuck in survival mode—it’s worthless, if you ask me. Nasty. I don’t want it.” Another cough. “I felt that way when I was ten, and I still do. You should at least be allowed to love what you want to love.”

Bors thought involuntarily of Valgund rolling over and blinking sleep out of his eyes. No one was keeping them from loving each other—for now.

“She cried and cried, you know, when she lost her friend. Foolish little ten-year-old me. It comes back to me sometimes so vividly, now I’m near the end. But you must be wondering why I called you here.” His aunt gestured with one stick-thin finger. “Open the bottom drawer of that chest and take out the black folder. Open it.”

In a daze, Bors obeyed. Inside the folder he found a series of glossy photos that made his throat close.

He was looking at the aftermath of a murder. A man’s corpse, several days old, had been laid out on the snow. His throat had been punctured, the blood long congealed and frozen, and his staring eyes were terribly familiar.

“Irin,” he said with a deep shudder. His cousin had run afoul of outlaws while doing unsavory errands for Hulda. “But I thought they never found the body.”

“That’s what I told the Constabulary. Look at the rest.”

Beneath the photos, Bors found a blood sample carefully preserved on a slide. Poor Irin’s, he supposed. There were some hairs, too. The last item in the folder was a note written in a careful, almost childlike hand: _I hereby do confess, of my own free will, that I murdered Irin Dartán in the year 353. Einara Derán._

The paper fluttered from Bors’s fingers. He bent and scooped it up, his heart pounding. “What on earth is this? Did you make her do it?”

Hulda’s laugh was strangled. “Make her? I loved Irin. No, the wretched girl did it on her own initiative. The most I could do was get her to lead me to the body.”

“But why would she?” While he might not trust Einara, Bors had never imagined her capable of this kind of violence. Remembering how she’d met him at the door with a warm clasp of hands, congratulating him on his success in the Sweetbush, he went cold.

“Your cousin knew something about her she didn’t want known.” His aunt paused for another bout of coughing. “But that’s not why I’m telling you, Borsha. Not to bring her to justice. That folder, it’s yours now.”

Bors tucked the hideous photos and the confession back into the folder and closed it. “She should be in detention. Even without his actual remains—whatever you did with them—there’s enough evidence here to convict her.”

Hulda sucked in a breath with an unpleasant rasp and released it. “And if you put her in a cell, what happens? She turns around and does the same thing to you. The folder isn’t proof, Bors. It’s insurance.”

Bors’s heart sank. Einara did know enough to get him exiled—though she couldn’t touch Valgund, thank everything green. “Why are you even telling me this?” He wished he’d never seen the pictures; he didn’t want to look at Einara and think of his cousin’s dead, frozen face. “If you don’t want her punished, what’s the point?”

“Insurance,” Hulda repeated with a gusty hiss on the S. Speaking seemed increasingly hard for her. “That girl—she’s your ally now. Like it or not. You have to know what she is. Might need to stop her.”

“Stop her from what?” Bors bent over his aunt, scrutinizing her gray face. As long as Einara’s motives dovetailed with his own, he hadn’t thought too hard about them. For a long time he’d assumed that she, like him, simply loved Kai and wanted to protect him.

“Not sure. Not sure even she knows. But revenge is the reason. And if it means burning down the city, making the streets run with blood? She will.”

Bors shuddered at the imagery. “Revenge for what? On whom?”

Another coughing fit cut off Hulda’s answer. He fetched the water again and fed her tiny sips, willing her to recover enough to speak.

She lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes. “Linnett family. She hates them. Maybe they’ll be enough for her.”

“What do you mean? How can she touch the Linnetts?” Then Bors remembered his resolution to warn Einara away from Ceill, and he nearly dropped the glass. He should have told Valgund. The man had a right to know if someone he loved was in danger. “She’d hurt the kid?”

“Such touching concern. For a high name.” Hulda sighed. “But I wouldn’t worry about the boy in particular. He’s been useful to her. And he has the Northmen’s protection.”

“He does?” Maybe Ceill really was Einara’s conduit to the Northmen. But Bors had more pressing things to ask his aunt while she could still speak. “You’re asking me to believe that Einara wants to burn down Redda. And that you’re a shirker. So don’t you both want the same thing?” The thought opened up a gnawing dread inside him. Was he the only one who wanted to _save_ Oslov? To make it what it should be?

Again Hulda’s fingers clawed his, the nails sinking in. “Why do you . . . think I told you . . . about my rat?”

 _I don’t fucking know._ One of the bedside monitors began to beep an alarm. Bors tried to rise, tugging his hand from Hulda’s. She needed a doctor, but he needed to know what she meant. “What are you saying? You don’t want to burn the city down? You just want the right to keep a disgusting pet?”

This time her sigh resonated like a laugh. Bors knew he should be going for help, but instead, as if mesmerized, he bent to hear her faltering words.

“I loved something, Borsha. Like you. When you love something, you don’t want to burn. You want to . . . build. But Einara . . .” Hulda turned her head to the side and drew a short, rattling breath. “She wants to burn, Bors. Don’t let her.”


	20. Notification Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the end again! Thanks for coming along. If all proceeds as planned, there will be at least three more novel-length stories in this saga.
> 
> But before I start posting the next big story, there'll be a short interstitial about Tilrey and Gersha in the kettle boy days, for old time's sake. Probably some more chapters of "All the Kinds of Broken," too.
> 
> If you left comments or kudos or both, thank you; they mean the world to me. If you just read, a huge thank you for that, too. Stay safe and be well out there. <3

_14 April, Year 371_

The night before Notification, everyone stayed in the dorm. No one went home. No one slept.

Ceill tried. He curled up on the bottom bunk and pulled the bedclothes over his head. He pretended he couldn’t hear Matti and Vlars, who sat cross-legged on the other bottom bunk playing cards. They seemed to think if they chattered enough, in their usual happy, empty-headed way, they could make this night like any other.

It wasn’t. While Matti and Vlars were both big, athletic boys who were popular with the whole dormpod, Matti had Strutter parents and Vlars had Drudge ones. Neither of them was much of a student, but after tomorrow, their ways were almost certain to part. Neither was exceptional enough to defy the family pattern.

A creak sounded above Ceill’s head as Jerom Egil rolled over in the top bunk. “What time is it?” he asked, yawning.

“Four twenty-three,” Vlars said too quickly. They were watching the clock, just as Ceill was.

Jerom’s long legs dangled over the side of the bunk. He landed heavily on the floor. “I need to piss.”

“You shouldn’t go out there,” Vlars said.

Jerom huffed. “Superstition. What’re they gonna do, change my Notification because I walked down the hall to the fucking bathroom?”

“No one goes out till the buzzer sounds,” Matti said.

Jerom shook his head and left, the door clicking behind him. He was a tall, stringy boy from an undistinguished Programmer family who spent his free time in the library and was always near the top of the class. This night held no terror or suspense for him.

Ceill rolled to his left side. Matti and Vlars continued their game, peeling cards from the deck with a sound like book pages turning.

They were friends, or they seemed to be. Yet Ceill had never once heard them discuss their thoughts or fears about tomorrow. If anyone ever admitted to being worried about Notification, they must do it in private, swearing their friends to secrecy. Having no friends, he kept his own fears to himself.

Since that ugly scene at the tram stop, Ludo had been acting like Ceill didn’t exist, and the others followed his lead. It felt good to be ignored, but it might not last. Everyone in the class was probably wondering whether Ceill Linnett would be Raised. Everyone must have heard the rumors about his parentage.

The door opened and closed. Jerom climbed back up the ladder and settled himself in the top bunk, making Ceill’s bunk shudder.

“Well?” Matti’s voice was steady, but only just. “See anything out there?”

“Nah.” Jerom sounded too careless. “Just our name plates, same as ever. What time is it?”

“Four thirty-one.”

Ceill dozed off not long after that. He woke with a jerk to the sound of strained laughter from the other three, hoped they weren’t laughing about him, and dozed off again.

Some time later, he was wide awake all of a sudden, hugging himself in the dark. No more sounds from the other bed; Matti and Vlars must have given up on distracting themselves and turned out the light. Maybe they were even sleeping.

Whatever was going to happen had already happened, Ceill reminded himself. He had taken the test. The necessary committees had met and decided his future. Worrying was pointless. Aleks would tell him to embrace his fate, whatever it was.

If he got the red tag they all desperately wanted, there was only one possible path for him: University followed by a desk job, probably in the Sector. He wasn’t fit material for Prog or Engineering or Med or any kind of science, so he would be a Diplomat or Discourser. The second option was a little embarrassing—it meant he would never be able to run for office like his father—but not shameful.

If Ceill was blue-tagged, on the other hand, he would have more choices—choices he _liked_. That was the hell of it. He could live in Thurskein with his grandmother and grow a beard and follow Aleks as a Free Northman. He could stay here and apprentice himself to Kai as a streammaker—if Kai was still speaking to him.

He rolled over, reminding himself what Kai had said about power. If he was red-tagged, he could still visit Thurskein whenever he chose. Work in the studio. See his friends in the Brothel. He would have to juggle his real interests with his official responsibilities, that was all.

Gersha would be proud. His mother and grandmothers would be proud. And, perhaps most importantly, Tilrey would be proud. As his father’s face floated before his mind’s eye, he thought, _I hope you’re satisfied. I did it for you._

Then he was sitting straight up in bed. An impossibly loud buzzing was sounding from everywhere at once—in the walls? Inside his head? By the time he realized it was just the usual wake-up buzzer, he also knew this wasn’t a usual morning.

The others were up, too, groaning and rubbing their eyes. “Who’s gonna go first?” Matti asked, sticking his legs over the side of the top bunk as the buzzer went silent.

“We could all go at once?” Jerom sounded less confident than he had a few hours ago. “Or take turns.”

“Fuck that.” Vlars was already at the door. “I’m going now.”

Jerom leapt down from the top bunk, and Matti imitated him. As if by mutual agreement, the three of them crowded through the doorway.

Ceill stayed where he was. _Embrace your fate—_ but he didn’t have to embrace it just yet, did he? He wasn’t sure whether he wanted privacy or only some time for his stomach to settle.

Through the half-open door, he heard Matti cry, “Yeah! I got Med!”

The other two were silent. After a moment or two, they came back—first Vlars, then Matti, then Jerom, who was turning the plastic tag over and over and muttering, “Engineering. I did not expect that.”

Without a word, Vlars gathered his shower shoes and toiletries. Matti watched him but didn’t speak.

Jerom looked up suddenly, straight at Ceill. “Aren’t you even going?”

“Linnett doesn’t care.” Matti nudged Vlars in his usual goofy way. “He’s too fucking special.”

Vlars didn’t smile. “Yours is red,” he told Ceill. “Like anyone’s surprised.”

Jerom’s eyes went wide. “You’re not supposed to _tell_ him.”

“Doesn’t change it one way or the other,” Vlars said with a shrug. Halfway out of the room, he turned back. “Your folks can try to hide it, but everybody knows about you, Ceillsha. _Everybody_. I’m gonna shower.” With a bang of the door, he was gone.

“Don’t mind him,” Jerom said. “He’s just pissed off. You _are_ going to look at your assignment, though? Right?”

“Ceill’s just showing off.” Matti looked glum now, all his triumph fled. “Don’t encourage him.”

Ceill went out to look at the tag that had appeared beside his name. It was a flimsy plastic tag, nothing anyone would want to keep as a souvenir, attached to a plastic capsule. Inside the capsule, he found a slip of paper on which was printed one word: _Discourse._

And just like that, the great question of his life was solved. He would never be a Councillor like Gersha, but he could work in the Sector, toiling over the wording of laws or regulations or public advisories. Maybe he could even get into the Bureau of Diversions and become one of the stream censors that Kai was always complaining about. Subvert the process from within.

_I have freedom_ , he told himself, going back inside to gather his shower things. _I have power._ He avoided the others’ eyes, though he could feel their curiosity like an itch in the air.

In the bathroom, he found Vlars brushing his teeth. Their eyes met in the mirror, and Vlars said, “Don’t fucking look at me that way. I knew how it was gonna go.”

Ceill dropped his eyes. Vlars was a thick-necked, tow-headed, normally jolly boy, nothing like Stefan. He thought of Stefan anyway. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you’re _sorry_.” Vlars spat out a mouthful of foam. “I never even wanted to be Raised, okay? Don’t wanna work at a screen till my eyes give out. Only enrolled here for my parents’ sake.”

_I don’t want be an Upstart, either._ But Ceill knew this was the wrong thing to say. “You should talk to Matti,” he said, turning briskly toward the showers because he didn’t want to hear whatever scathing reply Vlars would come up with. “I think he’s worried about you.”

***

The Booze Breakfast was a tradition. Everybody drank, whether they’d been Raised or Lowered. They brought bottles of beer and vodka into the caf and lined them up on the tables, and no teacher or monitor tried to stop them. They got rowdy, jostling and back slapping and using spoons to shoot currants at each other and recoiling in mock outrage and chasing their assailants around the room. They seized the day, as if this were their last chance to be anything but sober adults.

Ceill sat in a corner. He drank the ale that someone had poured into his glass, but he didn’t bother to refill it. The thirst for oblivion that he’d felt the night before the test was gone. Perhaps he would celebrate later with his parents, perhaps at the Brothel. Perhaps not at all.

Not far from him, two girls who’d been enemies for the past four years were passionately kissing and groping each other, practically consummating their secret crush in front of everyone. A knot of boys cheered them on. As Ceill’s eyes flitted around the room, he saw Vlars glugging down a entire bottle while Matti and his other friends yelled, “Go! Go! Go!”

Beside them sat Ludo Akeina with a smaller boy, one of his friends, perched on his lap. The other boy nuzzled Ludo and played with his hair as if trying to start a make-out session, but Ludo seemed only half-aware of the caresses. His face was expressionless, and his eyes were on Ceill.

Heat rose to Ceill’s cheeks. _He’s trying to read it on my face._ Soon enough, somebody would tell Ludo his news.

If Ludo wanted to derail Ceill’s future, he seemed to have lost his chance. While there were many regulations governing the morals of un-Notified minors, Ceill knew of no law that kept adult Upstarts from discreetly visiting the Brothel at the staff’s invitation.

But maybe Ludo had kept the secret in reserve for another purpose. He might have been waiting until Ceill thought he was safe before making good on his threat—by telling Gersha or Tilrey or Vera and savoring the disappointment on their faces.

Tilrey, Ceill realized abruptly, remembering his long-ago quarrel with Ludo over that horrid photo. Ludo would tell Tilrey, who was the one in the photo and the one flirting with Ludo’s mother. If Ludo could use Ceill to hurt Tilrey or vice versa, he would.

Ceill pushed his chair back, suddenly aware that nothing was keeping him in this room where he’d suffered so much past teasing and humiliation. Under cover of the commotion, he bussed his dishes and went to the wide double doors.

“Hey.” Jerom Egil slouched against the wall of the corridor, bottle in hand. “’Gratulations,” he said fuzzily.

“Uh, thanks. It’s just Discourse,” Ceill pointed out. “You’re engineering, right? You must’ve scored in the top ten percentile.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted Diplomacy.” Jerom tossed the empty bottle at a trash receptacle; it missed the target and shattered on the floor. “Problem is, my uncle got exiled for shirking. No way they’re ever letting me work in the Sector.”

Despite his lightheadedness, Ceill couldn’t help shuddering at that word: _exiled._ But it was part of his heritage, too; maybe he had to own it. “My great-grandfather was exiled. And—” he took a gulp of air— “everybody thinks I have, uh, questionable parentage. I never wanted to work in the Sector, myself. It’s just all I can do.”

He expected Jerom to sneer at the confession. To his surprise, the boy’s skinny brown face broke into a grin. “Too bad we can’t change places. Couple of misfits, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Green hells, you’re so _serious_.” Jerom lurched back toward the doors again. “You know why people don’t like you, Linnett? You act like you think you’re special. But I don’ mind.” He put his shoulder to the door and pushed. “I really _am_ special, so you can’t intimidate me. See you around.”

“See you, Egil.” And, as Ceill walked the echoing halls of this hated building that he was now free to leave forever, he found himself grinning a wide, goofy grin of his own.

Back in the dorm room, he swept his few personal belongings into a duffel. Then he donned his outergear and went straight out to the nearest tram stop.

An icy haze hung in the air—not quite snow, not quite mist. Finally returned from its winter hibernation, the sun turned the floating particles silver as he boarded the tram bound for Government Sector.

Rush hour was over, all the functionaries locked up tight in their offices. It felt like Ceill had the whole city to himself. He propped his feet on the opposite seat and yawned, watching the elaborate cornices of sandstone and the sleek, modern façades slide past. He was an adult and an Upstart. What could anyone do to him?

Soon the tram entered the cluster of black granite monoliths at the city’s center. He counted the stops until they reached the entrance that Gersha always used when he and Ceill visited Tilrey at the office.

The guard scanned Ceill’s ID chip, and for the first time in his life, Ceill saw a red dot pop up on the reader screen. It was real. Just like that, he was a Strutter.

The attendant in the cloakroom smiled as he took Ceill’s outer things, recognizing him. “Visiting Fir Councillor?”

Ceill smiled back. “I was Notified this morning.”

“Oh, were you, young Fir?” The old Laborer gave him a squinty smile. “Congratulations. Your dad must be proud—not that it’s a surprise.”

“Thank you, and it is a surprise. To me, anyway.” Ceill kept on smiling. The attendant had to be aware that Gersha was almost never in his office. He and Ceill both knew who he’d actually find there.

The Council and committee chambers were surrounded by a warren of stuffy stairways and windowless corridors walled with green-veined black marble. They always smelled to Ceill of chalk dust and old papers, like the Library—plus the distinct aroma of power.

It was quiet today; Council or committees must be in session. As Ceill made his way to Gersha’s office, the echo of his footsteps was sometimes interrupted by a distant roar from one of the amphitheaters—outrage? Applause? Did Tilrey ever get that sort of reaction when he spoke?

He thought Tilrey might be at one of the sessions, but when he tapped on the office door, it opened almost immediately.

Tilrey held a hefty binder under one arm. Behind the glasses that made him look older without actually altering his vision (Ceill knew because he’d tried them out once on the sly), he looked preoccupied with whatever he’d been doing.

For a moment, he and Ceill just stared at each other. Then Tilrey said, “Come in.”

Ceill came in. “You already know, don’t you?” If there’d been a flicker of anticipation or worry on his father’s face, he would have seen it.

Tilrey patted Ceill’s shoulder in a way that seemed meant as congratulatory, but the touch was awkward. “Sit down.”

He hadn’t denied knowing, which meant maybe he’d pulled strings to learn Ceill’s Notification in advance. Ceill wanted to be angry, but when he reached for that usually boundless well of resentment inside him, he found it dry.

“It’s Discourse,” he said. “Nothing to be so proud of.”

“Nonsense.” Tilrey deposited his binder on the desk, his tone a little heartier now. “You’ve always been clever with words. Why shouldn’t you do something you enjoy?”

_You’re the one who’s clever with words._ But Ceill supposed he was right. It was hereditary. “I guess this way I won’t have to sit through all those meetings like you do.”

“You may find meetings unavoidable in the Sector.” Fondness flitted over Tilrey’s face. “Gersha always hated them, too. That’s why I took over the dull parts of his job for him.”

Ceill was old enough to know that Tilrey had taken over a lot more than the dull parts of being a Councillor. On this day of all days, he wished his dad would be a little franker with him.

“You didn’t make it happen, did you?” he asked before he could stop himself. “My red tag?”

Everyone had heard rumors of parents who used their clout to ensure their offspring’s Notification, but most of those parents would take offense at any suggestion they’d done so.

Tilrey didn’t appear to take offense. “There was no need.” He swung his desk chair around and sat in it, facing Ceill. “Anyway, do you think I have that kind of power?”

Ceill arched a brow. _I don’t know. Do you?_

Tilrey ignored the silent question. “Well, you did it all by yourself, Ceillsha. We’re very proud of you.”

The old bitterness rose in Ceill’s throat, but he swallowed it down. He hadn’t come here for congratulations. “I have something to tell you,” he said, his vision blurring with the effort of keeping doubts about what he was doing at bay. “I need to ask you a favor. It’s about . . . a friend of mine.”

Stefan might not want to be helped, but Ceill could make a last-ditch effort. He picked his words carefully, trying to sound like someone who was clever with them. “A Councillor did him a grave injustice—an injustice that should be exposed. Redressed. But my friend doesn’t want to file a formal complaint. He’s afraid of shaming his family.”

Tilrey’s face was unreadable. “Is this friend of yours at the Sanctioned Brothel, by any chance?”

“Yes!” Shameful relief flooded Ceill. He hadn’t been able to get the words out.

Then he realized what Tilrey’s question meant, and his cheeks flamed. Either his dad had been having him watched, or— “Did he tell you? Ludo Akeina? Already?”

Tilrey rested his chin on a palm, looking elegant and distant at once. “He came to me in February, shortly after you took the quant section of the test. He told me you were madly in love with the star of your favorite stream and making a fool of yourself, spending your nights in the Brothel consorting with him and other whores.” He raised a brow as if to show what he thought of Ludo’s aspersions.

Indignation choked Ceill. “It wasn’t like that at all! I wanted to meet the streammakers to give them some _feedback_ , to tell them about Thurskein. I went to the Outer Ring, and then to their studio, and then I—well, I’ve been spending time at the Sanctioned, but not for _that._ My friend is a stream actor, but he’s only a friend. I’ve been meeting people. Talking to people.” _People who treat me like a friend and not a freak._ “Learning things.”

He wished he could communicate to Tilrey even a fraction of what he’d learned at the Brothel, about the world and himself. He wished he could tell Tilrey about Kai’s fierce pep talk and Stefan’s bantering and Einara’s dignity and even Ansha’s teaching him to play billiards.

But he doubted Tilrey would understand. To him as to Ludo, the Brothel meant _shame_ , and in Tilrey’s case it was a particular sort of shame that he was still struggling to put behind him.

“If you knew, why didn’t you tell me?” Tilrey had known his secret for a whole month and a half without saying a word. “Why didn’t you, I don’t know, _yell_ at me? Give me another lecture like you did in Thurskein?” _Tell me some more terrible stories about your past?_

Tilrey looked as if he weren’t sure of the reason himself. “I suppose I didn’t want to distract you before your Notification—it’s a delicate time. And maybe . . .” He frowned. “Maybe I’ve lectured you enough, Ceill. If my lessons haven’t taken by now, they never will.”

What did he mean? Was he saying Ceill was hopeless?

But that well of outrage inside Ceill was running dry again. Maybe Tilrey was simply stating facts: It was time for him to own the consequences of his own choices. No one could do it for him.

“You didn’t tell Gersha?” he asked, already knowing the answer. “Or Mom?”

“If I had, you would have heard about it.”

Ceill cringed at the thought of how upset his mom would have been. Probably Gersha, too, though Gersha would know enough not to underestimate people like Kai and Stefan.

He was glad Tilrey hadn’t told them, but it was unsettling to think Tilrey might not _care_. “You don’t believe everything Ludo said, right?” he asked. “Because it’s not true. If I’ve fallen in love with anything, it’s shooting—streams, I mean. That’s why I asked for the camera. I’m a kind of apprentice now.”

“You’re not the first high-named kid to fall in love with that crowd. The arts are seductive. If I worried, it’s because I’ve heard of cases where it turned out badly. Kids who ditched the test because they wanted to make streams.”

Ceill was glad Tilrey didn’t know how close he’d come to precisely that. “I can keep doing it alongside my other duties,” he said, raising his chin. “As a hobby.”

“I have no doubt. You’ve shown quite a talent for time management this term, haven’t you?”

Was that the slightest dig at him? Before Ceill had time to decide, Tilrey rose from his desk again. “I hate to cut this short, but I have a committee meeting in five minutes. I’ll see you tonight at your mom’s, with Gersha and your grandmother. I believe there’s a celebration planned.”

Ceill stood up. His cheeks kept flushing and cooling; he couldn’t tell whether Tilrey was treating him like an adult at last or just summarily dismissing him. “You haven’t answered me about my friend,” he said, biting his lip hard. “His name is Stefan Altmering. The Councillor who wronged him is Lindahl. And Ludo’s dad, Lindthardt—he was involved, too. I know they’re your allies in the Council, or at least in your coalition, but you could still look into it. What they did—”

Tilrey raised a hand to stop him. “I will look into the matter, Ceill. Discreetly. I promise.”

He went to the door and held it open. “And I’ll let you know what I find. Until tonight?”

When Tilrey dismissed you in that dignified way, it was impossible to object. For an instant, Ceill was a child again, convinced this big, strong, smart man would take care of everything.

“Till tonight,” he said and stepped out into the corridor, eager to return to the fresh air. Maybe he would ride the tram all day and look at the city. Maybe he would shoot it with his camera. Maybe he would stop in at the studio and tell Kai the good news. For today, at least, the world was his.

At the last minute, Tilrey stepped across the threshold and pulled Ceill into his arms. “I’m proud of you,” he said, voice a low rumble in Ceill’s ear. This time the words didn’t sound awkward at all.

In an even lower voice, he added, “I always knew you’d beat them, and you did. _My son_. A Linnett in the Sector.” His voice broke. “We beat them together.”

***

Einara was packing up the contents of Hulda’s room when Garnet, one of the Jewels, came to tell her there was a midday visitor.

The Director had few belongings even by Oslov standards. There was the warm, fuzzy shawl, imported from Harbour, that she liked to drape around her shoulders. A few books of sagas and children’s tales. A hair ribbon she might have worn as a child. Photos of her parents, three sisters, two nieces, and two nephews. Kids’ drawings, some of them signed “Irin” and “Bors.” Two water-smoothed stones from the single time she managed to smuggle herself out of the city and visit the seaside. ( _I wanted to see the ocean once. To have that memory_ , she’d told Einara.)

Einara hadn’t found what she was hoping to find—the folder that contained documentation of Irin Dartán’s death, including her confession to his murder. But that was no surprise. Hulda had given it to someone for safekeeping, and sooner or later, Einara would find out who.

Bors, most likely. After his visit, Hulda had slipped into the coma from which she never awakened. She was transported to the hospital, where she took her last breaths, and then to the crematorium. Her ashes had gone to one of her sisters.

If you’d asked Einara a few months ago, she’d have said that after Hulda’s death she would burn the woman’s possessions with pleasure. Now, though, she wrapped the shawl around her own shoulders and packed everything else carefully into a box. She shoved the box under the bed of the room that was now hers.

Hulda’s real treasure was a single window. Through it, Einara saw a strange afternoon that was hazy and frigid at once: A fine dust of snow hung in the air, silver and gold in the sunlight.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” she told Garnet. “This person wants me specifically? And he’s not a patron?”

The redheaded boy nodded. “A Drudge. He asked for Fir’n Director.”

The title didn’t fit yet. Einara knotted the shawl to keep it in place. “Is he a supplier?”

“No, he’s wearing an R-6 jerkin. Said he works for a Councillor.”

If the visitor worked for a Councillor, she should see him. “I’ll be right out.”

When she emerged into the reception area, the visitor was sitting on one of the nice sofas. He rose and came to meet her.

She recognized him instantly, though he was decades older than the photos. A tall, handsome man with a proud lift of the chin. His fine facial bones had only sharpened with age; his hair was still thick and dark blond. He wore glasses, perhaps to mute the effect of his large, stunning eyes.

She took a deep breath. “How may we help you, Fir?”

“You are the Brothel director? The new one?”

“I am.”

When she imagined this moment, Einara had always hoped her chin wouldn’t wobble or her knees knock. Now that she found herself face to face with the precise person Hulda had forbidden her to meet—Ceill’s father, the face of the True Hearth in the Sector, someone with an intimate knowledge of Malsha Linnett—she found herself less nervous than transported. A pleasant tingle of excitement spread down her neck and through her limbs.

Tilrey Bronn drew something from behind his back and handed it to her. It was one of the photos Kai had taken of Stefan, one in which he stood by the window with a forlorn expression just like that long-gone kettle boy.

“First you steal my likeness,” he said. “Then you steal my son. I’m starting to think you must want my attention.”

His voice was so dry, so emotionless, that Einara’s attention focused to a hard point. She knew the approach of a predator.

Her heart thudded, but she handed back the photo without trembling. “No one has stolen your son, Fir Bronn. No one could.”

He ignored this. “Mirella Tunstadt tells me you sent her a messenger, asking for a meeting.”

Einara saw no reason to deny it. “Hulda met regularly with her. I thought I might continue that. She refused.”

Tilrey nodded. With a glance at the ceiling, where they both knew there were cameras, he said, “Hulda wasn’t happy with some of your associates. She told us you were . . . erratic. I thought I’d come and see for myself.” His eyes fixed on hers, hard. “I’m not sure where you came from or who you are. But it’s time I found out.”

Einara stepped aside to usher him into the Brothel’s dim interior. “Would you like to take tea with me, Fir Secretary?”

For a moment, his eyes continued to take her measure. Then he went where she indicated.

Einara followed. Her heart was still pounding, less with fear than excitement. Hulda was gone. She was the new director of this fine establishment, and she was ready to take charge.


End file.
